“I should have known it was you.” Ford patted the dinosaur. “I’m glad she went to a good home.”
Bucky paused in his pacing to take something white from a bowl at the end of the room and put it in his pocket. “Did you find the present I left for you at the old bottling plant? Nice sign, by the way. Although no one with half a marble would believe that had been a wire factory.”
Maybe people with more than half a marble have better things to do than know how wire factories are supposed to look, Sadie pointed out.
“I thought it was you.” Sadie felt the warm flush of Ford’s vindication, followed by a hint of anger. “Why, though? Sort of out of the blue. I haven’t heard from you in two years.”
Bucky frowned. He picked up something red from a second bowl and put it in his other pocket. “You’d been papering half the desks in City Center trying to get your hands on that file. I thought I’d help.”
“How’d you get it?”
Bucky waved that away. “I also thought that once you saw it, read it, and learned how James really died, you would stop asking questions. You’ve been irritating a lot of people, Citizen Ford. I did it to shut you up. But that didn’t work, so I’ve resorted to an alternate plan.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in backup plans,” Ford said.
“I said alternate. And generally I avoid interfering with people as stubborn as you, so backup plans aren’t necessary.”
“I don’t need any interference,” Ford said, his anger rising, “not after two years.” There was something else mixed with the anger, Sadie sensed. Something subtle and gritty.
Bucky took a breath. “You think I abandoned you. I didn’t, Citizen F. Believe me when I say if I could be friends with anyone, it would be with you. But I have work, projects, that make that impossible.” He was pacing around as he spoke, not in straight lines but curvy eddies, as though his discomfort and frustration kept pulling him back.
The sense of grittiness inside Ford grew more pronounced, as though a wave of anger had churned old pebbles from the bottom of his emotional ocean. Sadie felt them grinding together while Ford took in the miniature-golf collection. “Yeah, I see how crucial your work is.”
“Everyone is entitled to company.” Bucky stopped pacing. His hands fell to his sides, and he stood looking forlorn but also determined. “I want to help you, Citizen Ford, but I can’t, I can’t, if you won’t move on.” His long fingers curved into fists of frustration.
Sadie saw images of Bucky flashing through Ford’s mind: showing up at their house at three in the morning with a pillow and asking to spend the night, at the park all day watching men play chess and winning the state chess championship the next year, refusing to leave his jail cell after serving his two days for stripping off all his clothes and running raving through a restaurant screaming that aliens were burrowing into his skin.
Ford packed his anger away, but a hint of gravel stayed. “I’m guessing you wouldn’t do this unless you thought I really needed your help.”
Bucky nodded and resumed pacing and biting the edge of his thumb. He said, “Have you heard of the Pharmacist?”
Dots spun into the alley outside Plum’s club. “I’ve heard the name, but I don’t know anything about him. Who is he?”
Bucky made wispy gestures with his hands. “Vapor. Smoke. Nobody.”
Ford sank onto the edge of the couch. “I heard Linc beat someone up, saying he was working for the Pharmacist. That doesn’t sound like nobody to me.”
“People do things they don’t want to do when they lose their minds,” Bucky said. “Fact of life.”
“You think Linc is out of his mind? Like, crazy?”
“Oh, yes.” Bucky nodded. “The Pharmacist does that to people—one look, and they lose their heads completely.” He stopped to take another white object from the bowl.
“Who is the Pharmacist?”
Bucky shrugged, “All-seeing, all-knowing invisible entity who governs hearts and minds, controls the power of good and evil, life and death, et cetera, et cetera.”
It reminded Sadie of the boogeyman Curtis had talked about when she’d run into him after her debriefing. When he’d almost kiss—
Stay focused.
Ford asked, “You mean like a criminal mastermind? Why isn’t Serenity Services after this guy?”
“By all means, go tell Serenity Services about a bad seed no one’s ever seen who controls most of the population of City Center,” Bucky admonished. “They’ll listen politely and then explain the Pharmacist is simply a figment of the collective imagination. That no one like that could possibly exist. And then—”
Sadie heard the low buzzing of Ford’s exasperation. “So the Pharmacist isn’t real?”
“—and then a few days later your body will turn up in some scenic spot. The Pharmacist prefers not to be a topic of conversation.” Bucky stopped and cocked his head to one side, listening, then resumed his pacing. “That’s the perfection of it. An idea so far-fetched it can’t be true. Only it is.” Bucky’s eyes had taken on a strange, excited sheen. “And I’ll give you this for free. Whoever denies the Pharmacist’s existence the most, you can bet they’re part of the smoke screen.”
Genius, Sadie thought. Every denial is proof of existence.
Ford said, “So since Serenity Services would deny his existence, they must be in on it.”
Bucky tapped his head and nodded wisely.
Sadie saw a bunch of dots jump from one place to another in Ford’s mind, from the memory of Linc and Willy in the alley backward to Kansas at the Castle. Ford said, “Does anyone call him Mr. P?”
Bucky looked surprised by Ford’s question. “Yes, although it’s a misnomer. Where’d you hear about Mr. P?”
“Willy’s girlfriend. She asked me if I work for Mr. P too.”
“Oh, dear, Citizen F. Not good. That ‘too’ is not good at all.” Bucky resumed pacing and biting his thumb. “It’s mainly the Pharmacist’s inner circle that uses that name.”
Sadie felt Ford watching Bucky, waiting for any of the clues his mind usually gave him that someone was lying, but all he got was white noise. None of his normal systems for assessing people were working. “So the Pharmacist controls Serenity Services. And all he has to do is look at someone and they go crazy? How does that work if no one’s ever seen him?”
“No one knows they’ve seen him. That’s why I prefer to stay where the Pharmacist can’t see me.”
“Is that what you’re doing here? Hiding from the Pharmacist?”
“Hiding? Maybe. Needed somewhere quiet, somewhere I could be alone with my thoughts. Otherwise they have a tendency to—” He made a spinning gesture with his fingers. He put another white thing in his pocket. “I’m trying to keep you from losing your head too.”
Ford pointed to the two bowls. “What are you counting?”
“These?” Bucky looked surprised. “The white beans are white vans. Suspicious, but not always troubling. The red beans are Royal Pizza delivery trucks, of course.”
Oh boy, Sadie thought.
“Where? How can you tell when they go by?”
Bucky pointed to the back wall of the room, where Ford saw a long jumpy image of upside-down tires on the street running near the ceiling, like a moving wallpaper border. Ford used the same puzzle solving from the tree house to come up with an explanation. “Pinhole camera,” he said. “You’ve got a few at street level, and you’re projecting the images down here.”