He brought her a glass of red wine and set it on a table while she finished feeding Drummer. "So," Edward said, "you want to tell me why you took the baby?"
"No."
"Our conversation isn't going to get very far if you don't want to talk."
"I want to listen," she said. "I want you to tell me why you put the message in the papers."
Edward walked to another window and peered out. No brown compact Ford in sight, but Mary's insistence that they had been followed gave him the creeps. "I don't know. I guess I was curious."
"About what?"
"Oh… just to see if anybody would show up. Kind of like a class reunion, maybe." He turned away from the window and looked at her in the dank winter light. "It seems like a hundred years ago we went through all that."
"No, it was only yesterday," she said. Drummer had finished the formula, and she rested him against her shoulder and burped him, as her mother had demonstrated. Mary had already taken stock of Edward's apartment; he had some nice pieces of furniture that didn't go with the place, and he was dressed better than he lived. Her impression was that he'd had a lot of money at one time, but his money had run out. His Toyota puffed blue smoke from its tailpipe and it had a bashed left rear fender. His shined shoes, though, said he had once walked on expensive floors. "You're an accountant?" she asked. "How long?"
"Going on three years. It's an okay job. I can do it with my eyes closed." He shrugged, almost apologetically. "I got a business degree from NYU after I went underground."
"A business degree," she repeated. A faint smile stole across her face. "I knew it when I saw you. The Mindfuckers got you, didn't they?"
That familiar scowl creased his face again. "We were kids then. Naive and dumb in a lot of ways. We weren't living in reality."
"And now you are?"
"The reality," Edward said, "is that everybody has to work to live. There are no free tickets in this world. Don't you know that yet?"
"Has my brother turned into Big Brother?"
"No!" he answered, too loudly. "Hell, no! I'm just saying we thought everything was black and white back then! We thought we were right and everybody else was wrong. Well, we were fucked up. We didn't see the gray in the world." He grunted. "We didn't think we'd ever have to grow up. But you can't fight time, Mary. That's the one thing you can't put a bullet into or blow apart with a bomb. Things change, and you have to change with them. If you don't… well, look what happened to Abbie Hoffman."
"Abbie Hoffman was always true to a cause," Mary said. "He just got tired, that's all."
"Hoffman got busted selling cocaine!" he reminded her. "He went from being a revolutionary to being a drug salesman! What cause was he true to? Jesus, nobody cares who Abbie Hoffman was! You know what the true power of this world is? Money. Cash. If you've got it, you're somebody, and if you don't, you get swept away with the garbage!"
"I don't want to talk about this anymore," Mary said, rocking Drummer in her arms. "Sweet baby, such a sweet sweet baby."
"I need a beer." Edward went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Mary kissed Drummer's forehead. He had an air about him; his diaper needed changing. She took him into the bedroom, laid him down on the bed next to her shoulder bag, and began the task. There was only one more diaper. She was going to have to go out and buy another box of Pampers. As she changed Drummer, she noticed a typewriter on a little desk in the room. The wastebasket had crumpled-up paper in it, squeezed like white fists. She took a wad of paper out and opened it. There were three lines on the paper; My name is Edward Fordyce, and I am a killer. My killing was done in the name of freedom, a long time ago. I was a member of the Storm Front, and on the night of July first, 1972, I was reborn.
Drummer began to cry, uncomfortable and sleepy.
Behind Mary, Edward said, "The publisher tells me I need a snappy opening paragraph. Something to hook a reader with real quick."
She looked up at him from the wrinkled paper. Drummer kept crying, the sound hurting her head.
Edward sipped his beer. His eyes seemed darker, his face tight with pressure. "They say they want a lot of blood in it. A lot of action. They say it could be a best seller."
Mary crumpled the paper again, into a hard little ball. Her fist clenched around it as Drummer cried on.
"Can't you get him quiet?" Edward asked.
The killer awoke. She felt it stir within her, like a heavy shadow. Edward was writing a book about the Storm Front. Writing a book to tell everything to the Mindfuck State. Going to spread the Front's blood, sweat, and tears out on the woodpulp pages to be licked by dumb jackals. A reunion, he'd said. I guess I was curious.
No, that wasn't why Edward Fordyce had put the message in the papers and magazines. "You wanted to find the others," she said, "so we could help you write your book."
"Background material. I want the book to be a history of the Storm Front, and there's a lot I don't know."
Mary's hand went into her bag. It came out with the Magnum, and she trained the gun on him, a stranger in enemy colors.
"Put that down, Mary. You don't want to shoot me."
"I'll blow your fucking head off!" she shouted. "No way are you making us whores! No way!"
"We were always whores. For the militant press and the rabble-rousers. We did what they dreamed of doing, and what did we get for it? You've turned into an animal, and I'm a forty-three-year-old failure." He swigged from the beer again, but his gaze stayed on her gun. "I was a stockbroker a few years ago," he said with a bitter smile. "Making a hundred K a year, living on the Upper East Side. A fast-tracker. Had a Mercedes, a wife, and a son. Then the bottom fell out of the market, and I watched everything go to pieces. It was like that night in Linden, but even worse because it was a house I'd built getting blown apart. Couldn't stop it. Couldn't. I spiraled down to where I am right now. So where do I go from here? Do I figure the books for Sea King the rest of my life and retire to an old folks' home in Jersey? Or do I take a gamble that a publisher might be interested in the Storm Front's story? It's past history, Mary. It's ancient and dusty… but blood and guts sells books, and you know we waded through the blood and guts together. So what's so wrong about it, Mary? You tell me."
She couldn't think. Drummer's crying was louder, more needful. Her brain was full of machinery that had lost its purpose. One squeeze of the trigger and he would be dusted. Everything was a lie; Lord Jack was not here, and he couldn't receive his son. This thing standing before her in Mindfuck State clothing vomited out bile and brimstone, but one fact remained: he had saved her life on a long-ago night of pain and fire.
That alone kept her from killing him.
"I've got an agent," Edward went on. "Big knocker in the business. He got me a contract on an outline. The manuscript's due at the end of August."
Mary kept the gun aimed at him as Drummer wailed.
"I don't want it to be just my story. I want it to be about all of us. Everybody who died and everybody who got away. Do you see?"
"I see a traitor," Mary said, "who deserves execution."
"Oh, crap! Forget the drama, Mary! This is the real dollars-and-cents world!" He slammed his bottle down atop a bureau, and beer sloshed out. "If we can make money off the hell we went through, why shouldn't we? I'd be willing to share the profits with you, no problem."
"Profits," she said, as if tasting something vile.
"Jesus! Can't you shut that kid up?" Edward walked toward Drummer. Mary stopped him by putting the Magnum against the side of his head and grabbing his red power tie at the knot. She wrenched at his tie, and Edward's face reddened. "… Choke…" he gasped. "Choking… me…"