The Boys from Santa Cruz (35 page)

He bounced off, embarrassed but uninjured. Shining the flashlight around, he discovered that the path had taken a ninety-degree turn.

“My mistake,” he murmured politely to the tree, then corrected course. Rounding the bend, Skip raised the flashlight to direct the beam straight ahead, and suddenly the weirdness quotient soared to heights he was totally unprepared to deal with. For standing sideways in the middle of the trail, caught dead center in the beam of the flashlight, a humanoid-shaped archer with a black face and round, protruding insect eyes dropped the arrow it was aiming at Skip’s heart and threw up its arm to shield its bug eyes from the glare of Skip’s flashlight.

While Skip’s mind was still trying to make sense of that, a towering, ursine figure loomed up out of the darkness and seized the insect man from behind in a bear hug. Skip stood there dumbfounded, watching helplessly as the struggle raged on, the insect man throwing himself from side to side in an attempt to free himself from the encircling arms, the bear man heaving and grunting in an attempt to lift the insect man off his feet.

And just when Skip had convinced himself that things couldn’t possibly get any weirder, the bear spoke. To him. “Hey, Magnum!” it called. “I could use a little help here, if it’s not too much goddamn trouble.”

“Ollee ollee in freeee! Ollee ollee in freeee!”

After subduing Charles Mesker, a.k.a. Asmador, and binding him hand and foot with his own bowstrings, Skip and Pender led,
tugged, pushed, dragged, and half-carried their struggling captive all the way back to the bluff at the top of the hill, yelling Owen Oliver’s version of “home free all” at the top of their lungs every few steps.

Dr. Oliver, carrying Steve Stahl in his arms, was the last of the hide-and-seekers to emerge from the forest, his white pajamas torn and stained, tear tracks cutting through the dirt on his cheeks, leaf crumbs in his bushy beard. Gently, he laid Stahl on the ground with the arrow still sticking out of his chest.

Beryl bustled over and gave Steve a cursory examination by flashlight, then lay down with her ear pressed against his chest, taking care not to disturb the embedded arrow. He’d definitely lost a lot of blood, she told Oliver, and his left lung had probably collapsed. While they desperately needed to get him to a hospital as soon as possible, she was also concerned that he might not survive much more jostling.

In the end, they decided to send the fastest runners to summon help. Tom, who’d run track in college, and George Speaks, a marathoner, volunteered. Pender, Skip, Oliver, and Beryl were to remain behind, two to keep an eye on Mesker, two to nurse the injured man.

As for the others, suggested a visibly chastened Dr. O, casting an uneasy glance in Pender’s direction, it might be best if Candace led them back to their tents or cabins while they waited for the “sacrament” to wear off, rather than subject them to a grilling by the authorities in their present, vulnerable condition.

“What condition is that?” said Pender, pointedly. Humiliation was the best outcome he could hope for if the gang back at Liaison Support learned he’d gotten himself dosed on LSD; more likely, he’d end up on the couch of some Bureau psychiatrist, trying to prove he hadn’t been rendered permanently unfit for duty. “How about you, Skip—you know what condition he’s talking about?”

“Not a clue.”

“Thank you.” Oliver’s entire being sagged with relief—he looked as though he’d just had a twelve-hour massage. But there was something in him that wouldn’t let him let it go. “You know, if you two had leveled with me in the beginning…”

“Don’t push it, sir,” snapped Pender. “I don’t know what the penalty is for dosing a federal officer with an illicit substance, but I’m guessing it’s serious.”

Somewhat startled, Oliver apologized, then nodded toward their wildly struggling captive, whom they’d tied to a tall, slender tree at the wider, landward end of the arrowhead-shaped bluff. “Would you mind if I had a chat with our friend there? Maybe I can help him calm down a little.”

“Be my guest.” Embarrassed now at how readily he’d reverted to his asshole FBI guy persona, Pender began patting self-consciously through the pockets of his ruined sport coat, looking for his cigarettes. He was relieved to find his smokes undamaged—thank God for the Marlboro hard pack. Nor had the battered pewter flask in his right jacket pocket lost a drop of his emergency ration of Jim Beam. “And hey, I’m sorry I overreacted there. I don’t know what happened—it was like Bruce Banner turning into the Incredible Hulk.”

“I understand,” said Oliver. “Old habits and all that.”

Since his capture, Charlie Mesker had been alternating between extended spells of near catatonia and raging tantrums that were short-lived but exhausting, in which he threw his body around as if he were his own rag doll, or slammed the back of his head against the slender tree to which he was tied. His hands were bound behind him, and someone had thoughtfully provided a zafu for him to sit on.

“Charlie,” Oliver said softly, hunkering down next to Mesker and cupping the back of the man’s head with his palm to cushion the contact between occiput and tree. He popped an orange capsule
of Thorazine into Mesker’s mouth when Charlie opened it to spew curses, then tilted a water bottle to his lips. (Though not a prescribing physician, Oliver always took a few Thorazine along on these acid training exercises just in case.)

Oliver watched Mesker’s Adam’s apple bob, then recapped the water bottle and eased himself to a sitting position on the damp, sloping ground at the base of the tree and began crooning to him. “Taaake it easy, Charlie. Caaalm and easy. You don’t have to fight
any
more. No one’s going to hurt youuu, and youuu’re not going to hurt aaanyone…, so you can juuust relaaax, relaaax into your breathing…thaaat’s right, thaaat’s the boy, Charlie…iiin and ouuut, niiice and easy…”

Charlie?
thinks Asmador.
Why does he keep calling me Charlie? I don’t even know anybody named—

No, wait, hold on a sec. There
was
a Charlie once…once upon a time. A human Charlie, a boy from Santa Cruz with a mother and a father and…and a dog. A mangy-looking, flop-eared mutt named Newton who got run over by a car on West Cliff Drive. And young Charlie, the tears in his eyes making everything all blurry, had helped his father bury Newton in the backyard, in a cardboard carton, and when they filled in the hole, the dirt and pebbles made a hollow, rattling sound hitting the cardboard.

“Boo-hoo, boo-hoo.” A devilish voice, derisive, amused. Asmador opens his eyes and sees Sammael leaning in over Dr. O’s shoulder. The scornful redhead is in his changeling guise, with his wings half-furled and one talonlike hand resting lightly on the human’s shoulder for balance. He’s wearing his human face, though, and when he speaks again, he sounds a lot like poor Luke Sweet.

“Well, aren’t you going to finish the story, dude? About how little Charlie dug up ol’ Newton a couple weeks later just to see what he looked like? And how instead of reburying what was left of his precious doggy, he
hid it in one of the heat ducts in the school basement. And how they had to shut the place down for the rest of the week?”

“How did you know about that?”

“I’m the Poison Angel—I know everything.”

“Oh yeah? Then what’s going to happen to me?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On how patient you are, and how clever. Because it’s going to take a long time, and you’re going to have to fool a lot of humans, doctors and nurses and lawyers and judges and just about every other variety, before they’re going to let
you
anywhere
near
a boiler room ever again.”

“But if I can do it? If I’m very patient and very clever? What then?”

“The answer is in the Book,” whispers Sammael. “The answer is always in the Book.”

Oliver, who had done more camping than Skip and Pender (no great feat: Stephen Hawking had probably done more camping than Skip and Pender), supervised the laying of the fire, with a little nest of dry grass and dead leaves in the center, an understory of twigs and smaller sticks, and a pyramidal superstructure of interwoven branches supporting the heavier logs.

Then a flick of Pender’s reliable old Zippo, a puff of orange, and soon the flames were leaping merrily, a beacon to guide the rescue helicopter that wheeled out of the western sky like an evening star less than an hour later and alighted in the middle of the bluff, blowing Oliver’s campfire all to flinders.

Unfortunately, the little medevac chopper had only enough room for the injured man and two others.

“We’ll be back for you in no time,” the pilot shouted to Skip and Pender as the chopper lifted off with Steve, Dr. O, and Beryl aboard.

Skip had to laugh at that. “What does he know about
no time
?” he called to Pender, who had finished stomping out sparks at the edge of the woods and was now gathering kindling to revive the fire.

“I second that emotion,” said Pender. “There was one…time back there when I looked at my watch and it was actually melting. I’d always thought that was just a cliché, like in the movies when they want to show the characters are tripping.”

“That’s how things
get
to be clichés—because they happen a lot,” Skip pointed out. “Hey, you know what I just realized? I haven’t taken a Norco since this morning, and
nothing hurts
!” Then, after thinking it over: “Of course, they’ll probably have to carry me home on a stretcher when the acid wears off.”

When they had the fire going again, the two huddled under the blankets the paramedics had left behind for them, arranging their zafus so they could watch the fire and keep an eye on Mesker, who appeared to be asleep. Pender took out his flask and took a sip, started to offer it to Skip, then remembered. “Oh, right, you don’t drink.”

“Oh, I drink,” Skip said sensibly. “I drink plenty. Just not alcohol.” He turned and brushed off the ground behind him, pried out a few of the larger rocks and tossed them aside, then lay back, propped himself up on his elbows, and watched the fire for either a long moment or a short eon. It all felt so elemental—the darkness, the crackle of the fire, the sparks shooting heavenward. “All we need is some marshmallows,” he told Pender.

“I always thought toasting marshmallows was overrated,” said Pender. “Picking that black shit out of your teeth—yucch!”

“You don’t
have
to burn them black, y’know.”

“I’m a man of extremes.” They watched the fire for, well, for
however long they watched the fire, then Pender broke the silence again. “Hey, Magnum, you want to hear something amazing?”

“Sure,” said Skip. “But I have to warn you, my definition of
amazing
is a lot different than it was, I don’t know, six, seven hours ago.”

“Is that how long we’ve been tripping?”

“Beats me,” replied Skip.

“And vice versa,” said Pender, confusing both of them.

“You were going to tell me something amazing?” Skip prompted, after what may have been a long pause.

“Oh, right. Here it is: if it wasn’t for Big Luke—you know, Little Luke’s father?”

Skip nodded.

“If it wasn’t for Big Luke, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you.”

Skip waited a few whatevers, then asked Pender if there was an explanation that came with that.

“Oh, right. The thing is, ten years ago, after Big Luke outdrew me in the post office, I swore to myself I’d never wear a kidney holster again. So last year, when the Bureau in its wisdom ordered everybody who was still wearing shoulder holsters to switch to behind-the-backs, I didn’t make a big fuss—that’s not how you do it in the Bureau. Instead I just sort of pretended I never got the memo, and my boss, bless his heart, sort of pretended not to notice. And the kicker, of course…”

Pender opened his jacket to show Skip his calfskin holster, with an inch of shaft sticking out from the safety flap and the arrowhead embedded in the bent trigger guard of the Model 10. “The kicker is that if I’d been wearing a kidney holster instead of old faithful here, then instead of sitting here talking to you I’d be lying dead in the clover with an arrow sticking out of my ribs.”

“That is pretty amazing,” said Skip. “But you know what’s really,
really
amazing?”

“What’s that?” said Pender.

Skip waved his hand around in a grand gesture loosely encompassing himself, Pender, the slumbering Charles Mesker, the breathtaking view, the earth below and the sky above. “Everything,” he said. “Just…everything.”

Special Agent E. L. Pender raised his pewter flask to the shimmering stars. “I’ll drink to that,” he said.

And he did.