To Tanya,
for showing me some of the magic in the world,
and Elaine,
for giving me a home to come back to.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Richard Curtis, Jim Frenkel, Tara, Ralph, Keira, Chris, Helen, Terry, Jack, Cappy, Scott, Harlan, Susan, Terry, Bill, Leanne, Robin, Richard, the IYHF, STA Travel, the strangers who paid my departure tax at LAX when I was broke, and to everyone who’s ever given me a meal and a place to sleep.
1
Tamenaga
Tamenaga Tatsuo had not worn a kimono since his daughter’s wedding, three years before, and few of his employees had seen him in anything other than a thousand-dollar business suit. None, as far as Nakatani knew, had ever been invited to discuss business with him in the bath, and anything unprecedented made Nakatani nervous; he liked an ordered, predictable, comfortable world, and intended eventually to retire to one … if Tamenaga permitted it.
He was ushered into a change room by one of Tamenaga’s attendants, an attractive woman whose age was unguessable and whose expression didn’t alter by a millimeter as Nakatani undressed. She wore a white robe that might easily have concealed a small armory, and she made him feel very naked. It required all his willpower to walk ahead of her without turning around, particularly as she made no perceptible sound.
Tamenaga’s bath was a Jacuzzi the size of a backyard pool, bubbling like a witches’ cauldron. Behind Tamenaga stood another white-robed attendant, a muscular Japanese in his thirties. Tamenaga himself sat at the far end of the pool with only his head, neck, shoulders, and arms showing above the foaming water; both arms and shoulders were elaborately tattooed. Nakatani bowed, trying not to stare at a detailed rendition of a spectacled cobra coiled around Tamenaga’s left arm, the hood spread across the biceps.
“Good morning, Nakatani-san,” Tamenaga said in Japanese with a trace of a California accent. “Won’t you join me?”
Nakatani nodded, then slipped into the foaming water quickly, trying hard not to remember the stories he’d heard about ninja who could swim underwater for minutes at a time.
“What have you discovered?”
“Sir, I …” He kept his head bowed and stared at the markings on the cobra’s hood—according to legend, the fingerprints of Buddha, for whom the snake had once provided shade. “I have checked everywhere. There is no question but that the girl stole it from Higuchi-san.”
“And where is the girl?”
“I … haven’t been able to find her. Yet.”
Tamenaga nodded. “And where is my son-in-law?”
“Higuchi-san should be in his office, sir … he was there when I left him.” Nakatani’s eyes bugged slightly as the cobra’s hood swelled and seemed to become scaly. “Inagaki and Tsuchiya are watching him. You didn’t say you wanted him brought to you—”
“I don’t,” Tamenaga grunted, and was silent for a moment. “Does the girl know what she has taken from us, Nakatani-san?”
Nakatani’s gaze followed the tattoo as it wound its way to just below Tamenaga’s wrist. “It seems barely possible, sir …”
“There are some people for whom anything is possible, Nakatani-san,” said Tamenaga smoothly. The cobra lifted its head and stared straight at Nakatani.
“Was anything else stolen?” asked Tamenaga.
Nakatani stared back at the cobra. It flicked its tongue at him and its hood widened.
“Was anything else stolen?” repeated Tamenaga sharply.
Nakatani pulled himself together as best he could. “No, sir.”
“You’re certain?”
“Nothing else is missing,” said Nakatani, not taking his eyes from the snake’s. “Maybe some cash of Higuchi’s, but he says no—”
“Then she knew what she was looking for, neh?” Tamenaga brooded. His son-in-law was probably telling the truth this time: Tamenaga doubted that he had the imagination to lie competently. Certainly he’d never been able to hide his infidelities from Haruko (who was Westernized enough to be irritated by them), let alone from Tamenaga.
“She may not be able to use it,” Nakatani ventured.
“She is extremely intelligent, even gifted, and would not have stolen it if she didn’t think she could learn,” countered Tamenaga, though he relaxed slightly. “But if we find her quickly enough, Nakatani-san …” The cobra turned away from Nakatani and flicked its tongue in the direction of Tamenaga’s ear, as though whispering a secret.
When Nakatani had been ushered out, Tamenaga climbed out of the pool. The cobra coiled itself around his arm again and became a tattoo. “Call Hegarty, tell him to be in my office in four minutes. I want a good picture of the girl, and a hundred copies. Send some men to the airport, the bus and railway stations … and send them to LAX as well. She’s had hours, she could be anywhere by now. It doesn’t matter who you send, as long as they have eyes and aren’t too obvious. Sakura, go and stay with my daughter. Buy her a black dress, something respectable, and put it on my account.”
2
Amanda
When she first saw him, he was sitting along a low brick wall outside the Greyhound station watching the shape-shifting clouds and early morning moon, his long legs stretched out before him in obvious enjoyment of their newfound liberty, his long black hair fluttering in the cold October breeze, his scuffed and faded pack serving as a backrest, the strap of his camera case wrapped tightly around his wrist. He opened his eyes slightly as she approached, then opened them wide to let his pupils dilate in appreciation. His camera case was in his lap and open in a moment.
His name was Michelangelo Magistrale, and he was nominally a professional photographer. His father, on the rare occasions that he acknowledged his son’s existence, called him a bum, which was at least as accurate. He had drifted cheerfully through twenty-three years, with little ambition and less greed; he had never been rich or considered himself poor, and not even his lovers had been able to hurt him seriously, though dozens had left him without his understanding why. He considered himself a pacifist; he carried no weapons and never consciously started a fight, but he had never lost one, either. He was essentially honest, but he had been questioned by police often enough to avoid them when he could. He had a cool head, a long reach, excellent reflexes, and the knack of anticipating his opponents by watching their eyes.
Strangers who noticed only his smoothly handsome face and beautiful hair tended to underestimate him, and Magistrale tended to agree with them. He was rootless by nature, a drifter, remembering faces and favors and little else, never planning or predicting the future, living from meal to meal and bed to bed. He rode the buses and trains rarely, preferring to hitchhike along the busier roads—but lifts to small towns like Totem Rock are difficult to find. When he saw the girl, the Greyhound ticket suddenly looked like a good investment.
Magistrale had recently worked in Nevada as a figure photographer for Bandit, a soft-core skin magazine; none of the women he’d encountered there (including the one he’d come to Totem Rock to see) had been remotely as attractive as the blonde who was walking toward him. She was wearing jeans and a sheepskin coat, a costume that almost completely hid her figure (the CIA should keep secrets so well), but her legs were long and she walked like a goddess—or at least like a girl who knows she’s attractive. Magistrale could have recognized that even if she’d been wearing a space suit.
She didn’t flinch or hide as he framed the shot, but she didn’t smile; as he zoomed in on her face, he noticed that she was anxious, maybe even scared. Reluctantly, he lowered the camera. “Hi.”
The girl nodded. “Do you have the correct time, please?”
He smiled. “If I haven’t missed a time zone somewhere along the line, it’s a quarter of nine.”
“Just off the bus?”
“Yeah.”
“From?”
“Toronto, I guess.”
“You guess?”
He grinned. “Well, it’s the last place I slept worth a damn—I mean, not on a bus seat. I stayed there for a week and bummed around, watched the leaves turning, took a few photos. It’s a nice place, very clean. Where’re you headed?”
She shrugged, almost invisibly. “Calgary.”
“And what’s in Calgary?”
“I just need to go there.”
“Boyfriend?”
“No.” She looked away, bit her lip. Her face, normally beautiful, was pale and drawn, and Mage decided he had to see her smile. “Where’re you going?” she asked.
“God knows,” he replied cheerfully. “I may stay here for a while and then head back down south. Or maybe go west. Vancouver or somewhere. Or maybe Calgary, now that you mention it.”
“You’re not from here,” she said, and it wasn’t a question.
“I’m kind of from everywhere. I was born in Brooklyn and I went to college in Boston for a year, if that helps, and my family’s from Italy, as if it didn’t show. My name’s Magistrale, but my friends call me Magus, or Mage. How about you?”
“Vancouver.”
“What? Oh. I meant … never mind.” She was staring at the cafeteria, which shared a roof with the bus station, obviously watching the people inside.
“I need some money,” she said suddenly. He glanced at the cafeteria window. All the customers were middle-aged or older, farmers or working stiffs in plaid shirts, and none of them likely to give a teenage girl money to run away with. He’d walked past the place after leaving the bus, and though he would have liked some breakfast and it was obviously much warmer inside than on the wall, he’d doubted he’d be made welcome. He turned his attention back to the girl and guessed her age as nineteen, almost certainly a college student. She was nervous, even jumpy, but she didn’t show any of the obvious signs of drug use—most of which Mage knew too damn well from months of living in the poorer, more dangerous areas of dozens of cities. He wished he could see her eyes, but they were hidden behind her sunglasses. She was carrying a large handbag, but no luggage.
“How much?”
“I’m twenty-seven dollars short.”
He nodded. Native New Yorkers are notoriously suspicious of anyone asking for money, and Mage, who had four sisters, knew from experience that pretty girls were no more trustworthy than any other human species … but he had about forty Canadian dollars, plus two hundred U.S. that he could exchange when the banks opened, and Carol sure as hell wasn’t going to charge him rent; he could afford to blow twenty-seven bucks if it was going to make this girl happy. After all, he had been able to travel cheaply across America because people had trusted him, giving him lifts and places to sleep, and occasionally much more. He was able to repay them with good conversation, a little driving, some good sex, and his trust. Trust was better than money, any day.
“Look, I have a room here,” she said, mistaking his hesitation for refusal. “Rent’s paid to Friday week, if you want to stay.” She reached inside the collar of her coat and removed a key on a braided thong. “Here’s a key.”
“What is it?” he asked. “Family trouble? Accident? Someone in the hospital?”
“… hospital.”
“Who?”
“Me. I have to go back there. I thought I’d be okay, but … oh, Jesus … !”
She began to cry, tilted her sunglasses up until they sat atop her head and rummaged in her voluminous handbag for a tissue. Mage watched her closely. He prided himself on knowing when people were lying, and she wasn’t. If she was telling the whole truth, then he was a virgin and an only child, but she wasn’t actually lying.
“What’s your name?”
“Amanda,” she snuffled. “Sharmon.”
He reached into his denim jacket for his wallet and removed two tens and two fives. “Here.”
“Thank you.” She wiped her eyes and looked directly at him for a few seconds before lowering her sunglasses. She still wasn’t smiling exactly, but she looked slightly more relaxed. “Thanks. I’ll go buy the ticket now, bring you your change.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. Look, do you have an address I can send the money to, pay you back when I can?”
He looked at her again and reached out slowly to remove her sunglasses. She flinched slightly but didn’t try to stop him. “How’re you going to get back here without any money?” he asked.
“I know some people in Calgary, or I should be able to hitch a ride.” She rummaged in her handbag again and removed a diary and a pencil. “Address?”
“I don’t really have an address … better send it to my Uncle Dante; I work for him sometimes. P.O. Box Eighteen … Eighteen something, Boulder City, Nevada.”
“Nevada?”
“You’re from there?”
“No … I’ve been to Vegas before.”
He found a business card in his wallet and let her copy it. “This is probably the best thing about being Italian, having relatives everywhere. And don’t worry about the money … just write to me, let me know you’re okay and where you are. Maybe I could come and see you.”
She nodded, finished writing and dropped diary and pencil back into her handbag. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she promised, standing.
“Hey! Don’t forget your key!”
“Keep it. Stay in the room if you like. Or leave the key there so the landlady can get it; I’ll only have to post it if you don’t. Please?”
“What’s the address?”
“Fourty-four-A North Street.”
He nodded and pocketed the key. “Hey! Smile!”
She had reached the door to the station but she turned to look at him, smiling as best she could, and he took a long shot of her. Suddenly she laughed, and he zoomed in for a mid shot, then a close-up, and for an instant it all seemed worthwhile.
She returned seven minutes later with his three dollars. He shook his head. “Buy yourself some lunch on the trip.”
“They’ll feed me at the hospital.”
He shrugged and accepted the change. She’d washed her face, redone her makeup and pocketed her sunglasses; her blue-green eyes were still red-laced and slightly puffy, and her eyelashes very short, but she looked much prettier. “Thanks again, Magus.”
He kissed her forehead, and her golden hair, noticing that it smelled, or maybe tasted, slightly strange. Not bad, just unusual. “Don’t mention it. It’s my good deed for the year. Or maybe last year’s … I’m a little behind. When’s the bus?”
“Comes in five minutes: twenty-minute rest stop. Do you remember the address?”
“Forty-four-A North.”
“Right.”
“What hospital?”
“What?”
“What hospital? If I come to Calgary, I might drop in, see how you’re doing.”
“Calgary General. Eight forty-one Center Avenue East,” she replied without any hesitation. They sat in silence for nearly a minute.
“You said you work for your uncle. What sort of work?” she asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, sometimes. I’m a photographer.”
“What sort of photographer?”
“Whatever sort they’re hiring. I do some wedding photos and portraits, but mostly it’s nudes for the girlie magazines.”
“Sounds like interesting work,” she said, poker-faced.
“Not really, not for long,” he said and shrugged. “The pictures never really look as good as I think they should, and if they did, the magazine probably wouldn’t want them anyway. And most of the women you see down there are trying to raise some money after their husbands have blown it all at Vegas, or divorcées who think they’re being independent, or losers who have never learned to do anything else with their bodies, let alone their minds. Would-be starlets on their way to Hollywood, small-time strippers, waitresses who got tired of waiting—”
“Are you sure you’re Italian? You don’t sound like one.”
“You mean my accent? I’ve got what they call a quick ear.”
“No, you’re just … not full of macho bullshit, I guess.”
He grinned. “I was about to finish up with ‘but never anyone who looks as good as you,’ but I guess you hear that a lot.”
“No, not really,” she replied. “Not recently.”
“What is it with this place? Everyone under sixty split?” He’d seen too many small country towns and bankrupted cities where that had happened — and others where it hadn’t, which were often worse. In his experience, little towns were even less friendly than the big cities, especially to impoverished strangers and beautiful young women.
“No … I just don’t get out much, I guess.”
“Well, let me know when you check out of the hospital and we’ll change that. Or are you too busy?” No reply. “Studying? What’re you studying?”
“Mathematics. Probability theory.” There was the crunch of gravel behind them and the bus pulled into the parking bay, the door opening with a depressing wheeze. “Thanks for everything, Mage,” she said and stood.
“My pleasure.” He walked with her to the bus door, kissed her hand—it felt unusually cool—as she gave the driver her ticket, then stood back and craned his neck to watch her choose her seat. “The Lord giveth and Greyhound taketh away,” he muttered, still wishing he could have made her smile more. He glanced at his watch: not quite 9:30, and over an hour and a half before Carol was due, but at least the bank should be open.
The senior cashier was mid-twentyish, with a city girl’s bearing, a Northeastern accent, a pleasant smile, and no wedding ring; Mage guessed that some officious bastard had banished her to this ghost town and called it a promotion. He cashed a twenty-dollar traveler’s check and asked for directions to North Street. Number Forty-four was seven blocks away, farther than he cared to walk carrying the pack. “Thank you kindly.”
“You staying here long?”
“I don’t know. How about you?”
“Until Christmas. Then I’m being transferred back to Toronto.”
“Home?”
“Uh-huh. How about you?”
He shrugged. “I drift. I was in Toronto a week ago. Nice place.”
“No home?”
“Not really.” He grinned. “Most people say, ‘That must be exciting,’ or something like that. You look like you’re sorry for me.”
“I am. I mean, I just can’t imagine that, not calling anywhere home.”
“At least you’re honest. Most people don’t know what they want, and they don’t dare wonder.”
“And you?”
“I don’t know either,” he replied. “But I’m going to keep looking ’til I find it. Ciao.”
He returned to the wall at eleven, armed with a cherry Danish and a new Vangelis cassette. He listened to the tape on his Walkman, watched the sky, and waited. A few minutes before noon, he removed the headphones and heard Carol’s car, an ancient VW Beetle, long before it turned the corner and chugged to a stop. The door flew open without restraint and Carol emerged—she was short enough to get out of a Beetle quickly, if not gracefully— smiling broadly.
“Hi. Just put that in the hood and we can get home. I’ve been up since five and I’m just about dead; it’s my week for mornings. How’re you?”
“I’m fine.” She was moving too quickly for Mage to grab her, so he picked up his pack and swung it into the luggage compartment. “Where d’you work?”
“The Stop-and-Rob down near the highway.” She slammed the hood down and opened the door for him. “Four of us rotate, which isn’t too bad, and we’re all very dangerous during the graveyard shift. And I need the money—I mean, I kept the house and it’s on the market, but you can’t sell a house in this town and get enough to move anywhere there’s any work. Okay, let’s go. I’m going to make some breakfast and hit the sack immediately—and sleep. You must be bushed yourself after the bus trip. Oh, yeah—Jeannie, who has the shift after mine, wants to know if you can do a photo of her. She saw that thing you did of me, not the one for the magazine—you know, the one you took in that red dress—and she really liked it.”
“I never wore a red dress in my life,” muttered Mage, but Carol didn’t hear him over the noise of the engine.
“So, what d’you want for breakfast?”
Now I really am going to go to sleep,” she said nearly three hours later. “I oughta make you drink that coffee, too.” She stretched lazily. “So, how come you’re even better during the day? I thought magic needed a full moon or something.”
“I don’t know,” he said, smiling. “Maybe I’m solar powered. And you’re pretty magical yourself; it felt like you really do rotate.”
“What? Oh!” She laughed and kissed his biceps—sliding up (or down) the bed to kiss him anywhere else would have been too exhausting. They lay there for several minutes silently, and then she asked, “What’re you thinking?”
“Who says I’m thinking? I don’t have the energy left to think—not that I’m complaining.”
“Balls.”
He stared at the ceiling. “You’ve got good shadows.”
“Oh, yeah? What can you see up there that you can’t see down here?”
“There’s a leopard—see the spots?—and the Venus de Milo … well, she’s a little lopsided. Maybe it’s the Venus de Willendorf instead.” She looked up, obviously puzzled. “The Willendorf Venus is a Cro-Magnon figurine, a fertility—never mind.”
He rolled over and kissed her. She was twenty-nine, he knew, six years his senior, and she’d never been beautiful. She was proud of her body, particularly of her large, big-nippled breasts; he loved her smile, which was honest and almost pretty. When he’d photographed her for Bandit, he’d made sure that she smiled, joking and flirting and flattering her. Not that most of the readers gave a damn about prettiness—they wanted glands and genitalia—but Mage was a photographer, not a dissector. To him, a shot that didn’t include the woman’s face had all the erotic appeal of a guillotine. Despite his first name, no one had ever called him an artist, and he would have denied it if they had—but he had some of the vision that makes an artist, though not the technique, nor much desire to learn it.
“You know how to live,” he said. “Nothing I know is of any use.”
She laughed. “I’m lying here hardly able to move at half past three in the afternoon, and you say that nothing you know is of any use? If Roy had known how to do that, I would never’ve let him leave.”
“Thanks.” He kissed her again, then flopped back onto his side of the bed and yawned. “Guess I’d better get some sleep, too.”
“What do you want for dinner?”
“Oh, God …”
“I don’t feel like cooking, either. Pizza suit you?”
“Are you kidding? I used to live on the stuff, I love it. With extra anchovies, right? And tomorrow I’ll go shopping and I’ll cook dinner: Spaghetti Bolognese a la Magistrale.”
Four nights, he thought. Four wouldn’t hurt either of them. And then where?
3
Packer
George Packer had learned to fire a shotgun on his father’s farm at the age of seven. Thirty-one years later he was an almost fanatical collector and target shooter, an itinerant farm-machinery salesman who also sold black-market firearms. He was of average intelligence, with a modest talent for mathematics, and no doubt he had a good Freudian reason for wanting to blow wet, messy holes in living beings.
At ten to midnight he sat in his car thinking of how much he’d enjoy blowing a hole in Gacy, the employer he didn’t mention on his tax return. Gacy had told him to look for this blonde—which was okay by Packer—and given him a list of little towns on the Greyhound route. He’d also given him half the payment in advance—which was more than he’d get in a good month of selling combine harvesters—but he hadn’t told him about the boredom. The girl had been missing for nearly two weeks now, and Gacy doubted that they’d ever find her at all—which, Packer guessed, was why he wasn’t freezing his buns in Totem Rock, Saskatchewan, population 330, a few minutes before midnight.
And to cap it off, the Greyhound station and café were closed. Packer looked at the timetable and eventually deduced that since the bus was arriving at twenty to one, the station would probably open at 12:30 or so. He yawned, set the alarm on his watch for 12:25, pushed his seat back as far as it would go, loosened his belt and closed his eyes. His left arm dangled down, brushing against the stock of his favorite gun, a Mossberg 12-gauge with a winter trigger. He also had an HK-4 in his pocket “for luck.” The rifles and SMGs in the trunk were unloaded and nominally for sale; the ammunition, much of it hand-loaded and illegal even in the U.S., was in his other suitcase.
He woke when the bus arrived, scratched himself and walked to the dingy office. Not surprisingly, no one was boarding or disembarking, but the clerk was busy with a few parcels. Packer bought himself a Dr. Pepper from the machine and waited.
“Help you?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Packer replied and brought out the picture. The clerk was only a kid, nineteen at the most, which was good; he wouldn’t have forgotten a girl that beautiful. “You seen this girl come through here? It’s not that great a shot, I know, but she’s about so tall”—he held his hand level with his mustache—“long blond hair, unless she’s done something to it… .”
“You her father?”
“Uncle,” Packer replied glibly. He was muscular and thick-featured, with colorless eyes and receding chestnut hair, and resembled the pretty blonde not at all. “She was running away from her father—you can probably guess why. But he’s just died, and her mother—my sister—wants her home. You understand.” The story was a good one, maybe too good for Gacy, and Packer wondered who’d thought of it. “You’ve seen her, haven’t you?”
“I don’t know. Like you say, it’s a lousy photo. But there was a girl like that, a blonde, stopped off here …”
“When?”
The boy looked at him, his face darkening slightly with suspicion. “When did she run away?”
“Last year. She was working in Salt Lake City for a while. Least that was the postmark on her letters until a couple of weeks back, when she said her job had finished and she was looking for work somewhere else. I hoped she might come and see me, but like I said, it’s been two weeks now… .”
The boy stared at him, then nodded. “About a week ago. What is it now, Wednesday?”
“By about half an hour, yeah.”
“It must’ve been early last week. Monday, I guess. I haven’t seen her since.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure. No offense, but I’d remember her.”
“No offense taken, you’ve been a great help. You wouldn’t know where she would’ve gone?”
The boy shrugged. “Maybe to the motel, unless she’s staying with a friend. Or there are rooms out at the other end of town you can rent by the week.”
“Thanks,” said Packer and returned to his car.
He’d neglected to ask one question. The boy only worked nights and so hadn’t seen the girl catch the morning bus the day before.
Carol slipped out of bed as gently as she could and dressed in the dark. Mage, who had grown up in a small apartment with paper-thin walls, slept on without stirring.
He looked years younger with his eyes closed, she thought. Not boyish—he was too tall to appear boyish—but innocent, or cute, or peaceful. She wasn’t sure there was a word for it. Words weren’t her native language. He slept soundly, snoring very softly. She felt that she could sit there for hours and watch him sleep—wait for a shadow of beard to appear on his chin, maybe. He was a sloppy dresser, but he was as fussy as a cat about the rest of his appearance; his first action on leaving the bed had been to shower and wash his shoulder-long black hair. She finished dressing, blew him a kiss from the doorway and quietly closed the door behind her.
He would, she thought, make a terrible husband—not that she was looking for a husband, of course.
A few hours later, Mage emerged from a dream of Amanda—an unsatisfying, vaguely disturbing dream of the scent of her hair and the sadness in her eyes—and remembered where he was. He lay there for a few minutes, then guessed that the day was about as warm as it was likely to get and hauled himself out from underneath the blankets and into his robe and size eleven moccasins. A moment later he was prowling around the apartment with a large mug of coffee. It was a small apartment, and thus the prowl was rather badly cramped.
She wasn’t at the motel and she hadn’t been there—unless the old man who ran the place was lying, of course. But that, Packer thought, was unlikely. He didn’t know very much about people, but he was used to dealing with liars. That left only the apartments and then, he hoped, he could get the hell out of Totem Rock. He donned his army-surplus greatcoat, which—apart from being warm and weatherproof—was the only garment he owned that could hide a silenced MAC-11. Then he packed his bag and took it out to the car.
The car, he suddenly realized, might be recognized—it had Edmonton license plates and was newer than anything else he’d seen in town. Walking the necessary seven blocks would make him less conspicuous. It wasn’t as though he was going to need the 12-gauge or the AR-15. Gacy had specified that the girl was to be brought in alive and uninjured; stressed it too, though he hadn’t told Packer why. Packer suspected, quite rightly, that Gacy didn’t know, and wondered who he was working for.
He pulled the cover back over the trunk and locked it down. It was weatherproof, like the greatcoat, but its real purpose was to hide the shotgun in the back seat. Then he shrugged, feeling the reassuring weight of the MAC-11 on its sling, and set off.
It was midday before Packer had his answer, and he didn’t like it. The girl had been living there, briefly, but the caretaker hadn’t seen her in three days. The rent was paid until the end of the week though, and she might be back. Who is she, your daughter?
Packer reassured the caretaker with the same story he’d told the Greyhound clerk and the motel manager (town this small, he thought, they probably compare notes on everything that happens, probably be talking about this for months), then decided to ring Gacy. He spotted a booth less than a block away and fumbled in his pocket for change.
“I think I found her,” he said as soon as he recognized Gacy’s voice.
“What d’you mean, ‘I think’?” came the weary reply.
“Well, I found her.”
“O-kaay! Where is she?”
“Uh …”
“She got away, didn’t she?” Gacy didn’t say “You dumb asshole,” but he thought it very loudly.
“No … I don’t know where she is, but she was here. I found her apartment, and I know the name she was using. It may even be her real one.”
“What is it?”
“Well, it looks to me like that should be worth a bonus.”
“Yeah. Maybe. If it helps us catch her, now you’ve let her go. What was it?”
“Sharmon. Amanda Sharmon. And I didn’t let her go; I don’t even know she’s gone.”
“What you don’t know isn’t worth shit.”
“She’s paid the rent here ’til the end of the week.”
“She can probably afford to do that in every pissant town in Saskatchewan, you jerk. Could probably have bought the place. Why d’you think these guys want her?”
“I don’t know. But she must be here. She didn’t catch the Greyhound and there’s no other way out of town.”
Gacy sighed. “Maybe she bought a car. Maybe she hitched a ride—she’s a looker, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“A place this size, away from the highway? No cars for sale that I’ve seen, and nobody ever goes through here, not slow enough to notice.”
“Hmm … so maybe she’s shacked up with someone there. Have you seen inside the room?”
“No.”
“Do it. Break in if you have to. And keep looking around town; if you’re right, she’s still there. Call me again tomorrow. At least now we know where she was—that’s something.”
Packer found himself wishing he was wrong. “Okay. Thanks. Talk to you tomorrow.” Bastard, he thought.
Carol glanced at the bedside clock, did a double take and then sat up, clutching the quilt to her chin. “You better get moving. Jeannie’s coming over at seven.”
“Jeannie?”
“The girl at work? Wants you to photograph her? She’s coming over for dinner. You remember.”
“Tonight?” he asked lazily.
“She’s coming to dinner tonight. The photo you can do anytime you’re here, or do you do that better in the daytime too?”
He grinned and sat up, stretching luxuriously. “Actually, yes. You don’t have the lights here for portrait work, so I’ll have to rely on the sun and use a flash for fill. She has the afternoon shift, hasn’t she?” Carol nodded. “So I guess I’d better do her one morning. While you’re at work. Is that okay?”
“You’ll have to ask her,” replied Carol offhandedly. “It’s okay with me.”
Mage disentangled himself from the bedclothes for the second time that day and walked toward the shower. “Is dinner formal?”
“No, but it’s going to be cold. You’d better wear something.”
He laughed. “That’s what I meant. I only have one set of clean clothes left. I meant to go looking for a laundromat this morning, but you didn’t leave me a key.”
“Oh, damn; I’m sorry. There’s one—a laundromat, I mean—on North Street.”
“It’s okay. Tomorrow morning’ll be fine. And I’ll get that stuff for the spaghetti.” He stepped into the bathroom and turned around. “And while we’re on the subject, hadn’t you better get dressed too?” He shut the door on her reply. Quickly.
4
Kirisutegomen
Morning came, and hid behind the clouds. Mage awoke after nine, rose slowly, dressed hastily, and began sorting through his clothes. The key that Amanda had given him fell from the pocket of his jeans; he picked it up and looked at it for a moment. It was shiny and seemed fairly new, with the Volkswagen-shaped head of a Lockwood but without a brand name. Obviously a copy. A letter “A” was stamped crookedly on one face; the other face was blank.
The thong looked less like leather than like plaited hair—dark hair, not the girl’s blond—and it certainly didn’t smell like leather, though it didn’t exactly smell like hair either. He stood there for a moment remembering the cool, strangely flat scent of Amanda’s hair … then shrugged and stuffed the key in the pocket of his jacket with his coins.
The laundromat was at 37 North Street, and Mage walked past the small apartment building at 44 North without particularly noticing it. It was only after he had bundled his clothes into the washer and reached into his pocket for coins that he found Amanda’s key and realized where he was. He glanced around the room and frowned. The machine had a fifteen-minute cycle, the laundromat was chilly, and the plastic-seated chairs, with their uneven metal legs, looked far less comfortable than a Greyhound seat. The antique fluorescent tubes flickered arrhythmically like something out of Alien, making reading impossible, and there was no one else around to talk to (Mage had never actually picked up anyone in a laundromat, nor did he know anyone who had, but he lived in hope). Besides, Amanda might have left the fixings for a cup of coffee. He dropped the coins in the slot and ambled across the windy street without looking back.
As soon as he fit the key in the lock, he sensed that someone else—not Amanda—had been there recently, though he couldn’t have said how he knew. The apartment was even colder than the laundromat had been, and switching the light on only made everything a more dismal shade of gray. The place was tidy, mainly because it was so empty; the only thing that seemed remotely worth stealing—an old portable black-and-white TV—still stared cycloptically at a slightly threadbare sofa and matching chairs, a standard floor lamp now visibly substandard, a recently re-re-re-painted dining-room suite, and a small, empty bookshelf. No pictures on the wall, no hints of personality. How could anyone, even a student, bear to live like this?
Cautiously he closed the door behind him, removed his gloves and placed his camera case on the bookshelf. A glass, a cup and saucer stood in the kitchen sink. He opened the small fridge and peered in at a half-empty container of blueberry yogurt (a cautious sniff suggested that it was only a few days old), a tub of margarine, a small wedge of Camembert cheese, two eggs, and three slightly limp carrots. The freezer compartment was empty except for a tray of ice cubes and a thick layer of frost. The motor muttered when he closed the door. The pantry contained a box of tea bags, three-quarters full.
There were two other doors leading out of the room; the first he opened led to the bathroom. There was a cake of Ivory soap in the shower, only slightly worn, and the rings from shampoo and conditioner bottles, no longer there. The cabinet was bare and the laundry hamper empty.
The bedroom contained a slightly sagging double bed, an empty bureau, and a closet that hid only a dozen wire coat hangers. There was a large box of tissues on the bureau, but nothing that was identifiably hers, no books or photographs, nothing beautiful or meaningful, nothing to return to. As though she’d come here with nothing but that handbag and left with the same, without time to impress her personality on the room at all. As though it were a cheap motel, or a set in a bad TV series. As though she didn’t have anything of her own.
He shuddered and walked into the bathroom again, looking in the sink and the shower drain. Not a single hair.
He sat on the toilet and pondered. Even if someone had raided the place last night—and he realized suddenly where that impression had come from: small objects that had been put back slightly out of true with their dust shadows—nothing had been taken. If there had been anything to take, Amanda had taken it herself. Wondering what “it” might be, he returned to the living room, donned his gloves, shouldered his camera case and walked out. He was still musing as he crossed the road without looking, and he didn’t notice Packer staring at him from inside the phone booth outside 41 North Street.
Mage dumped his damp clothes into the spin-dryer and was fumbling in his pocket for some change when he heard the door open and close behind him. He turned around to see a thick-featured, middle-aged man reaching into his war-surplus greatcoat.
“Hi.”
Packer smiled slightly and drew his MAC-11. Mage stared at it and swallowed, then stared down at his own left hand as though it belonged to someone else. He swallowed again and this time found some of his voice. “Uh … it’s okay,” he croaked quietly. “I don’t have a … what do you want? If it’s money, I’m sorry, but you’ve got the wrong person. I’ve just got enough for the—”
“Where is she?”
“—dryer and—Who?” He’d seen photos of Carol’s ex; this definitely wasn’t him.
“The blonde. The one whose apartment you just left.”
“The …” He inhaled raggedly, nervously, and began again. “Who’re you? Her father?” There was no discernible family resemblance, but he looked to be the right age, and Mage had known several pretty girls with uglier parents.
“Never mind that. Where is she?”
The washing machine clunked suddenly, changing its cycle, and Mage jumped, nearly losing control of his bladder. “I don’t know.”
“What were you doing in the apartment?”
“Nothing. She gave me the key. I wanted to see if she’d come back.”
“So she’s coming back, is she?”
“I don’t know.”
Packer grunted. “You her boyfriend?”
“Me? No! I just lent her some money …”
“When?”
“Yes … no, day before yesterday. What was that?”
“Tuesday.”
He nodded. “Whatever you say.”
Packer scratched his chin with his left hand; the gun, in his right, barely wavered. “So if she’s coming back, she must’ve gone somewhere first, right? So where?”
“She caught a Greyhound, said she was going to Calgary.”
“You’re lying,” said Packer flatly. “I already checked that.”
“Well, that’s what she told me. I saw her get on the bus and it was headed for Calgary, but I don’t know where she went from there. For real, I don’t know.”
Mage stared at the gun, at the long magazine and the thick suppressor, vaguely recognizing it as an Ingram. What was that riddle? “How do you hit something with an Ingram at more than ten feet? You throw the damn thing overarm.” Unfortunately, the muzzle was barely a yard away, no one could miss at that range. He realized that he’d answered all the questions and that now the guy would shoot him. What if it jammed? he fantasized. Machine-pistols were notorious for jamming, weren’t they? His left hand, in his jacket pocket, clenched until he felt his nails bite into his palm, felt the jagged edge of the apartment key between his middle and ring fingers. If it jammed, he might—
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