She was groggy. I showed her the flask. “You did it,” I said.
I wasn’t getting a reaction from her.
“Angel.”
“Give me—” She raised her hands as if to fend me off. “Give me a minute . . .”
Richard Cleary, in a white shirt that caught the light, was shouting, jabbing his finger in the air.
He knew exactly what we’d done.
Which meant he knew exactly what manner of hokum he’d been perpetrating on his followers.
And he wasn’t yelling at me. He was yelling at his congregation. Talking about blasphemy. Sacrilege. Ungodliness . . .
It could have all got very nasty then. He had his heavies there, backed by a bunch of the congregation. There was a lot of talk about the law and the police and still more about settling things right then and there.
One thing saved us.
Silverman kept filming. And as long as he kept filming, everyone behaved.
They say that cameras can inflame a riot, that everyone will play up for the lens. But sometimes, they can calm things down.
It was a standoff, for the moment. I guided Angel to the car. She was lucid but unsteady. I wanted her out of there. I started to dismantle the equipment. I didn’t answer Cleary’s demands. I didn’t even look at him. When one guy moved towards me, Silverman stepped forward, too, making clear that he was going for a close-up.
“I will have justice,” Cleary warned. “I’ll find where you live, each every one of you—”
“I have sound, as well,” said Silverman.
I started reeling in the cables. We lost some—caught on something in the pond, connections snapped—and I had to walk out on the jetty to reel in the last few lengths.
I think it was the fastest cleanup that I’ve ever done.
There were bits of wet, shredded balloon still clinging to the wires, and strands of weed.
Everything stank of mud.
I threw it all in the back of the car.
Far off, I heard a siren.
I nodded to Silverman. He moved towards us, camera raised.
As we drove off, someone threw something—a rock, maybe—and it smacked on the rear door and Angel jumped, like a woken sleepwalker.
“What the hell?” she said.
By then we were out of the trees, bouncing down onto the street.
And we were gone.
The cop car passed us, heading back the way we’d come.
Chapter 36
Heading South
“You’re all right?”
“I’m good.”
We’d dropped off Silverman at his van. Now Angel and I were back at the Gemini, collecting our possessions, packing our bags.
It was time to leave town.
I watched her from the corner of my eye. She worked fast, efficiently, but now and then she’d pause, and cock her head to one side, like something had distracted her. It probably shouldn’t have bothered me, only it did.
“You want to see the doc, or something?”
“I’m fine.”
“You fell. You ought to get a CT, check for concussion.”
“I’m fine! Besides,” she grinned, “doc’s too busy, dealing with the TB. Right?”
“That’s a thing I’d definitely like to know some more about,” I said.
I settled with the night clerk. Told him we were heading for Chicago, which we weren’t, and wanted to make an early start.
The air outside was fresh and warm. The sky was just starting to lighten, up above the Taco Bell.
She stood there, one hand on the car door, and her head tipped back.
“Hear that?” she said. “Like music? Like in church or something?”
I listened, but I didn’t hear a thing.
The sun came up as we were driving south. A long, flame-colored contrail cut across the sky, fading to a dappled spatter over the horizon. Fast food’s de rigeur on trips like this; we caught the early morning shift for muffins at McDonald’s, ate it on the move. I drove. She dozed. I was glad to see her get some rest. She’d left her coffee, so I helped myself to that and pushed on through the morning.
I got a text from Silverman: Clean getaway! We ROCK!!! Then, a moment later, You?
He was into this. He’d been scared, but now he had the rush and the excitement, knowing that he’d got away with it. I knew what that was like. He’d feel like James Bond, like he’d beaten all the odds—like he was practically immortal.
Still, he’d handled himself. He’d been frightened in the boat, but he’d done what was needed. And after, the way he’d used the camera—that was special. That was good. I texted back: Thanks, mate. You did well.
We should have celebrated. Angel’s first retrieval, and a tough one, too. Maybe exhaustion cut the thrill of it. But neither of us felt like partying.
In a town called Napoleon, east of Defiance, west of Liberty Center, we sat in the parking lot at Pizza Time, a little red-white-and-blue building, and ate pizza, and waited for the Registry’s dispatch rider. He came on time: a sixty-year-old biker with a full white beard, an outlaw Santa Claus.
He brought papers to be signed. I started working through them, leaning on the car roof to write.
“Hell of a rigmarole,” he said. “I couriered for Chase Bank, twenty years. Was never this much hassle.”