"You do that."
A definite cooling on the far side of the table.
"Let's move on to another topic. Tell me about your stay at the Creighton Institute."
Thompson fixed him with his blue gaze. "Why do you want to know about that?"
"Well, Hank, as I told you, I read your book to prepare for this, but I also read a lot of your other interviews as well."
He smiled but it had lost some of its previous warmth. "Doing your homework. I like that."
"Well, I wanted my piece to be a little different. You've earned yourself a lot of column inches lately and I'm looking to cover some new ground, if possible. So… about Creighton…"
"If you want to cover new ground, that's fine with me. But why the Creighton Institute?"
"Well, it struck me as odd that after your conviction—and I must say, I was impressed with your candor—the federal government shipped you from Georgia all the way across the country to New York. I don't know a lot about the federal penal system, but I doubt that happens very often." Jack put on a smile. "I mean, ITSV hardly makes you public enemy number one. You must have wondered at that yourself."
"I sure did."
"Did you ever find out why?"
"Nope."
"Not even from the Creighton people?"
"Not a hint. Can we move on?"
Jack was far from finished. "Did you know that the Creighton Institute is listed as an incarceration facility for the criminally insane?"
A semi-strangled laugh, then, "I'm a little crazy, but I'm not that crazy. Seriously, though, they had two separate populations: the violent types in the lockdown wing, and the nonviolent sort in the medium-security area."
Violent types… lockdown wing… could Jerry Bethlehem have been one of Levy's patients at Creighton? Could they be connected?
"Did you make any friends there?"
"I suppose."
"Have you kept in contact with any of them?"
"One of the conditions of parole is that you avoid contact with any other criminals—and anyone I knew inside was a criminal."
"How about the staff?"
"Look," he said, his annoyance clear, "when I got out they shipped me back to Georgia."
"But now you've returned to New York. Do you like it here?"
He relaxed a smidge. "Yeah. A lot. I'm thinking of setting up the Kicker HQ here. The city's already got the biggest number of Kicker clubs in the country. Seems like a logical choice."
"Indeed it does. Does that mean we can expect to see a lot more Kicker graffiti around town?"
He frowned. "That's not approved nor encouraged, but it is an indicator of the level of enthusiasm for the evolution."
"You keep calling it 'evolution.' Why is that?"
"It's like when an ugly caterpillar makes a cocoon and then comes out as a big, kick-ass butterfly—it's kicked off its lower form and evolved into a higher one."
Jack wondered whether this would be a good time to tell him that he wasn't describing evolution at all.
Nah.
"Speaking of the Creighton staff—"
"We weren't speaking of the staff."
"—did they do any testing on you?"
"Sure. Blood tests, x-rays, psychological tests up the wazoo. Where's this going?"
"Did they perform any experiments on you?"
"What do you think I was living—a grade-Z horror movie?" He glanced at his watch. "Sorry. Gotta run. More interviews scheduled."
Yeah, right.
Jack rose and retrieved his recorder. "Same here. Gotta get back to Trenton and type this up. By the way, got a title for your next project?"
Like, maybe, Punt?
"Haven't decided what to write next, but I'm sure it will come to me."
They shook hands, assured each other it had been a pleasure, then Jack headed back to the street.
Not a wasted trip. He'd learned a few things about Hank Thompson.
First off, he was a little scary. A hint of Manson lurking beneath the Morrison.
Second, he'd seen the Compendium. Jack didn't know if he'd come up with the Kicker Man figure on his own, or from an earlier peek at the Compendium,
but the look in rus eyes when Jack mentioned the metallic cover… he'd seen it… maybe even had it now.
Third, he was defensive about the Creighton Institute. Maybe it was the "for the Criminally Insane" part that bothered him, but Jack had a feeling it might be something else. Something he didn't want made public.
Jack saw another trip to Rathburg in his future. The very near future.
5
"Who was that son of a bitch?" Hank said as he barged into Susan Abrams's office without knocking.
She jumped in her seat and looked up at him.
"Who? That reporter?"
"Who else would I mean? Did you check him out?"
"Well, no—"
He felt like strangling her.
"Damn it, isn't that part of your job?"
She blinked. "We—we don't vet every reporter who requests an interview. What happened?"
"Never mind that. Just call his paper—the Trenton whatever it is—and check on him."
"But—"
"Now!"
He paced back and forth outside her door—no room for it in her tiny office—as she fumbled with this and that trying to get in touch with the paper.
John Tyleski… he'd bet his next six months of royalties that guy was no reporter. Because a simple everyday reporter from a hick paper in Trenton wouldn't know about the Compendium of Srem. Hank had known about it for only a couple of days himself.
What a find!
And all because one Marty Pinter, a janitor at the museum, just happened to notice the Kicker Man in an ancient book on the desk of a professor who just happened to have had a stroke; and Marty, who just happened to be a
Kicker himself, decided that the old book belonged in the hands oi the Alpha Kicker.
Almost as if Fate had been pulling a few strings…
Hank had known at first sight it was a hell of a find—especially with the Kicker Man big as life inside. The book called the figure something else, something unpronounceable beginning with a Q, but no matter. Hank was itching to go through that Compendium with a fine-tooth comb and learn all he could from it, but he had no time, damn it. He'd had it almost three days now and he'd only been able to skim the surface. If he wasn't doing interviews and radio and TV, he was speaking at Kicker rallies. He didn't have a life of his own anymore.
Well, he'd make time. He had a feeling it was going to be very important to his future, and the future of the Kickers.
Maybe it would give him a hint of where they were going. He wanted to know because he had no idea where this movement he'd started was headed.
No way he'd ever admit that, but it was true. Sometimes he'd wake up at night bathed in sweat, scared by the numbers of people responding to his words, to his book—joining Kicker clubs all over the country, paying dues, donating money.
Every few days, for maybe a few seconds, he missed his old life before he got inspired to write the book. His job in the slaughterhouse had alternated between being a "knocker"—shooting the steel bolt into the cow's head to knock it out—and a sticker—slitting the cow's throat after it was hung upside down by a leg from the overhead rail.
Hot bloody work, dressed head to foot in a yellow rubber suit that was red after the first ten minutes of the shift, but very satisfying in some ways. At least he'd known what he was doing. Now…
He had to trust in whatever had brought him this far. He felt like a human antenna, receiving signals from someplace far off in the universe. He sensed it most when he was speaking. The words, the rising and falling in volume, the gestures, they just came to him. And as for writing the book… he'd never been much of a reader, but the words had just flowed from him through his pen and onto the backs of flyers or envelopes until he'd graduated to yellow pads.