"That was real enough," Doctor Leaky went on, finally speaking at just a conversational volume. "But the cards aren't fooled by any of the rest of it. The people in Doom Town, and all the human-sacrifice statues around town. All your Fijis that died, too, they haven't changed anything." He smiled sadly. "It's still just me."
Newt's wrinkled old eyes were closed. "Beam me up, Scotty," he said softly.
The innocent cliché angered Leon. "Shut up," he said through clenched teeth. "Just shut up."
Ray-Joe Pogue carefully backed his camper-laden pickup truck into one of the spaces in the hospital parking lot, then shoved the gearshift into park, turned the engine off and tapped an inch of ash off his cigar.
The ash didn't hit the upholstery. As before, it shattered to dust in midair and swirled into the three-dimensional outline of a small fat person sitting on the passenger side of the seat.
Bloated and black and fermented, came the voice in Pogue's head, ripped to bits by coyotes and covered with sand flies. What's left of my belly looks like cooked bacon. The tattoos are a wreck, like a vandalized painting.
"You already told me your body's screwed up," said Pogue nervously.
He lied to me; he broke his promise.
"A real bastard," Pogue agreed.
He had first met the ghost this morning; it had taken the form of popcorn and cigarette butts on the asphalt outside his camper door at dawn, its voice haltingly sounding in his head, and later it had tried, unsuccessfully, to animate a sheet of the Las Vegas Sun. After about ten minutes they had settled on cigar ash as the easiest medium for its physical appearance.
I don't care if my mom's dead, said the voice in Ray-Joe Pogue's head now, just so they don't call me Ollie like Hardy.
Pogue held the door lever and stared uneasily at the churning fat person silhouette-in-ash. "I thought your name was Vaughan."
You can call me that. Or you can call me Bitin Dog. Our bodies were left in the desert. Our name is Legion.
"Like in the Bible, huh?" said Pogue. "But anyway the King is here, at this hospital?"
He is.
Pogue had a gun under his jacket, but he hoped he wouldn't need it. He took the brown plastic bottle out of the pocket of his white sequined denim jacket. "Inderal," he read off the label. "I've known musicians who take this stuff—athletes, too—to keep from getting the shakes and jitters when they have to perform. You sure it'll do, and not just mellow him out?"
He's asthmatic. It'll close his bronchial tubes.
"Asthmatic, right. Okay, you're the doctor."
Your camouflage.
"Don't worry, I didn't forget."
Before stepping out of the truck, Pogue obediently put on his Polaroid sunglasses and took off his shoes to tuck the newly bought water-filled plastic sole-liners inside.
"And I'll walk counterclockwise all the way to him," Pogue told the dim gray ghost as he put his unwieldy shoes back on, "like what you said, a windshield." Last he put on a baseball cap from the Tiara Casino, the logo of which was the best hand in Kansas City Lowball, 7-5-4-3-2 unsuited.
Inside him, said the voice in Pogue's head, there's a—a skinny man waiting to get out.
"Skinny man on deck," agreed Pogue nervously as he opened the truck door and felt the heat.
The ghost became just a pinch of grainy powder in his ear when he stepped through the doors of the hospital, and Pogue had to resist the impulse to scratch it. He hoped none of it had got into his long sideburns, where it would look like dandruff.
The ghost's voice was a buzz now, directing him down this hallway and that—and making him pause frequently to walk in a tight counterclockwise circle on the carpet—and when Pogue pushed open the cafeteria doors the ghost said, There. The man on the left at that table over there.
"Are you sure?" Pogue murmured.
The man on the left, repeated the voice.
Pogue sighed, with both tension and disappointment. He had known that the King might be in any sort of body, but it offended him that this body was so short and round and red-faced and jolly-looking. Damn me, he thought, with a beard he could pass for Santa Claus! And that's a cheap suit.
An abandoned newspaper lay on a table near the three old men, and Pogue sat down and began reading it. The cafeteria smelled like macaroni and cheese. He could simply wait until the King left and then shoot him in the parking lot, but he didn't know if he dared wait for that. The man hadn't glanced at him yet, but Pogue was afraid that if the King were to focus his eyes on him, he would see him, see him, in spite of the fact that Pogue was in effect standing on water, and had neutralized any electromagnetic emanations from his eyes behind the Polaroid lenses, and wore a disguising poker hand on his hat.
In his pocket he broke the cap off the medicine bottle and palmed one of the capsules.
Just shoot him, said the voice in his head.
Out of the corner of his eye Pogue saw the King look up, as though he'd heard the voice. Pogue's face went cold, and he felt a drop of sweat run down his ribs. He watched for any sudden movement at the King's table; if any of the three old men seemed to be going for a gun, Pogue would roll to the floor and draw his own gun. Come up shooting, and worry about getting away afterward.
"Shut—up," he murmured.
No. Shoot him now.
The King pushed back his plastic chair and stood up on ridiculous little bow-legs. He looked around the room, but his gaze swept over Pogue without stopping. Pogue's hand, still palming the capsule, was sweaty on the grip of his gun.
The King said something to his companions, and they got to their feet, too, and the three of them walked to the cafeteria doorway. They stood there, looking up and down the hall.
Pogue's back tingled with anticipation of a bullet as he stood up himself, still holding a section of the paper in his left hand, and strolled past the table the King had been sitting at.
As he passed it, his right hand broke the capsule like a little egg and shook the tiny grains into the King's coffee.
He kept walking. The only exit in front of him was the twin metal doors that led to the kitchen, so he pushed them open and walked into the steamy clatter beyond.
Go back and sit down, Your Majesty, he thought as he blundered between steam tables and people in white aprons, looking for another door out. Nothing's wrong. Sit down and finish your coffee.
Diana sat restlessly on the hospital lobby couch, and finally she put down the magazine she'd been trying to read.
Scat had been transferred to this hospital last Wednesday, and though this was the first time she had come here, she knew what room he was in. This was where she was supposed to meet Dr. Bandholtz … who was probably the only person who knew that she was alive.
Would he have sold that information? Or, more likely, would someone have learned from the police that only one person had died in the bombed apartment on Venus Avenue and then have exerted leverage on Bandholtz, who would be the likeliest to hear from her?
Her heart suddenly beating fast, she stood up and looked around the lobby. The receptionist was writing in a file, and a young couple was talking intently to a very old woman on another couch, and the young Asian woman by the door was probably just blinking at Diana because she had stood up so abruptly.