These men are monsters, Armentrout thought. They’ve trekked much farther out into the dark than I ever have, and abandoned items from the original spiritual kit that I could not ever abandon.
And he might have spoken—but now Louis and Andre had hiked their chairs around and were staring at the television over the bar.
On the screen, Muir and Armentrout’s mother had got to their feet and were doing an awkward dance around the studio floor; his dripping mother was making swimming motions, and Muir had pulled up his diaphanous pants cuffs and was walking on his heels. They were both staring right into the hypothetical camera, right out at Armentrout—he avoided looking squarely into their phosphor-dot eyes, even though he doubted that they could get a handle on his soul through the television screen—and they were chanting in unison, “Why so stout, Richie Armentrout? Let ’em all out, Richie Armentrout!”
Louis’s face was pale as he turned back to stare at Armentrout, and his voice was actually shaky: “They’re…talking to you?”
“Leftovers from the old Dale Carnegie days,” Armentrout said hoarsely as he shoved his own chair back and stood up. “We’ve got a deal—let’s get out of here.”
Outside, the Grant Street pavement glittered with reflected neon, and rippled like sketchy animation with the constant rearrangement of the falling raindrops.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
Brethren and sisters of the hold-door trade,
Some two months hence my will shall here be made.
It should be now, but that my fear is this,
Some galled goose of Winchester should hiss.
—William Shakespeare,
Troilus and Cressida
THE rain kept up all night, and into the morning.
In spite of Mammy Pleasant’s wish for as much on-time as she might still be able to have, she didn’t appear at all throughout the gloomy morning, and Pete Sullivan wound up making lunch—tacos of fried ground beef and chopped ortega chilis, with the corn tortillas heated in the grease and a hot red salsa splashed liberally over it all. There had been only one Alka-Seltzer cup on the table this morning, and at lunch it was just Cody who sweated and scowled as she ate the restoratively spicy Mexican food and washed it down with a succession of cold beers. She was wearing one of Cochran’s dress white shirts, with MONDAY freshly inked over the pocket.
After Kootie had cleared away the dishes and Angelica had taken the ads from the San Francisco Chronicle out to the living-room couch, Cochran stood at the back door and looked out across the wet yard at the Torino, which for all of Cody’s work still shook as its engine was gunned.
Cody herself had shambled back to bed right after lunch, declaring that she needed to rest the cracked ribs and sprained hand that Angelica had diagnosed and taped up yesterday evening; it was Arky Mavranos who was out revving the car engine in the rain—pointlessly, for the Torino was blocked in by the Granada that was parked behind it.
“He’s near used-up,” said Pete quietly, standing with a freshly opened can of beer beside Cochran and looking too out the window. “I don’t know what his part in this thing tomorrow is supposed to be, but it better not call for liveliness. He doesn’t even drink beer anymore, and he doesn’t eat, either, except for rice and beans and tortillas. That shrapnel-hit to his skull, or else that ghost that was on him…” he said, shaking his head, “broke him down.”
“At least the engine’s in park now,” said Cochran. “A few minutes ago when I ran out there he had it in drive. I told him there’s a mud track that curls down the slope to the 280 at the back of the yard, but that he’d have to drive right through the greenhouse to get to it.” He tossed his cigarette out through the hole in the door window onto the patio. “Now I think of it, I’m glad he didn’t just do that.”
“No chance,” said Pete with a faint, sad smile. “He wouldn’t run over Scott Crane’s skeleton. And he wouldn’t have the heart to move the bones, either.” He finished his beer and visibly thought better of throwing it out the window after Cochran’s cigarette.
“Morituri emere, or something,” he said, stepping into the kitchen. “‘We who are about to die go shopping.’ Angie and I are going to take the Suburban truck out to fill the tank and check the oil in preparation for whatever it is that’s going to befall tomorrow, on resurrection day—and Angie’s made a list of bruja items to shield Kootie with, so we’re going to stop at a grocery store. Oils, candles, chalk, batteries for the stuffed toy pigs. Anything you want? Beer’s already on the list.”
“A Kevlar suit and hat,” said Cochran absently, still staring out at the unhappy man sitting alone in the roaring, smoking car. “A squirt gun full of holy water. A home skitz-testing and lobotomy kit.”
He turned away from the broken door-window and walked into what he still thought of as Nina’s kitchen, littered now with Coors twelve-pack cartons full of empty cans, the shelves crowded with Angelica’s morbid herb bundles and saint-decal candles. “No, if you’ve got beer on the list, I guess I—” He sagged; all at once the whole house was too depressing to bear. “Oh hell, I don’t appear to be going to work today, and I’ll just get in a fight with Mammy Pleasant if I hang around here. I’ll go with you.”
“Oh.” Pete picked up his denim jacket from the pile of damp clothes and scarves on the kitchen table. “Okay. We’ve told Kootie to stay away from Plumtree, and it looks like she’s down for the day anyway. Angie’ll want to leave him her 45, but she’d do that even if you were staying.” He pulled on his jacket and then lifted down one of Angelica’s stuffed pigs from on top of the refrigerator. “Get you fitted for a battery,” he said to it.
Kootie stepped into the kitchen now from the front hall, and Cochran could smell wine on the boy’s breath. “Is Mammy Pleasant planning on making dinner?” Kootie asked. “I’d rather order in a couple of big American pizzas, actually, than have another Creole thing.” He shrugged. “I believe tomorrow I’m gonna be eating in India.”
Cochran and Pete stared at him, and Pete began to stammer a response, waving the stuffed pig.
“I hear they have a New Delhi,” Kootie added hastily.
Pete exhaled. “Here comes your mother. Don’t upset her unless it’s necessary, okay?”
Angelica stepped into the hall, carrying her stainless-steel .45 automatic in one hand and tucking a shopping list into the hip pocket of her jeans with the other. “Good deal on Coors at Albertson’s,” she said. “Are you coming along, Sid?”
“Thought I would, instead of going to work.”
“Here, Kootie,” she said, handing the gun to the boy. “Cocked and locked. Sid, we’ve got the carbine in the truck, but why don’t you bring your .357 too.”
Pete took the truck keys from a hook by the door as Cochran nodded and hurried back into the living room to get his revolver out of the locked strongbox on the bookshelf. “We should be back in an hour,” Pete told Kootie. “If Pleasant shows up, tell her we’re getting pizza. Tell her she might like it.”
Freed of the two car covers, the red truck was in good enough condition to drive. Last week Mavranos had pulled out the holed, starred windshield and sealed a new windshield in place, and scraped the broken glass out of the rear panel windows and replaced them with sawn pieces of plywood. Mavranos himself had not driven the vehicle since parking it in Cochran’s driveway thirteen days ago, possibly because it would agitate the fragments of Scott Crane’s skeleton that were scattered among the cubes of broken window glass in the truck bed.