An hour later found him walking up the steep incline of Lombard Street. The world seemed to have a colored transparency laid over it, painting woodwork and masonry with a pulsing array of colors that might’ve been soothing had it not been so unnatural. Visions appeared in the windows, in the air, on the street—giant rabbits and lollipops and girls in pinafores, tanks, soldiers, mushroom clouds, a blizzard of books, a sudden riot of grapevine and pill bottles, a lone pterodactyl cruising silently down the urban defile. If he squinted, he could see through these apparitions, but it was easier just to let them roll over him. To trust that the world would continue to be solid even though his eyes told him he was walking on a crystalline lake over a bed of multicolored stones. No, not stones. Eyes, winking at him knowingly. The only thing he worried about was the return of the flaming boy. Chandler didn’t know who or what it was, whose mind it had come from, but he knew he couldn’t control it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
A pinkish purple sea turtle swimming toward him slowly resolved into a massive mauve Imperial from the late fifties, before Chrysler scaled them down. An expensive car, immaculately maintained. Just what Chandler was looking for.
He felt for the driver’s mind. He was as gentle as he could be—he didn’t want the man, Peter was his name, Peter Mossford, to veer out of control when the road turned to water. Facts flitted past like flash cards. Mossford was fifty-two. Divorced. Was returning from an emotionally hollow rendezvous with the woman he’d foolishly left his wife for. Not that he missed Lorna—a shrew, born and bred—but he missed his boys. Mark, fourteen, still living at home with his mother, and Pete Jr., in his second year at Dartmouth. Mossford used to love to take Pete camping in the hills north of the city when the boy was younger—hell, when he was younger, before work left him too tired for anything on the weekends besides a steady stream of Scotch-and-sodas. What he wouldn’t give to go back to the good old days, when his hair was still brown and thick and his sons didn’t retreat to their rooms the minute he walked through the door, blasting their ridiculous jungle music on the hi-fis he’d mistakenly bought them in a bid to win their affection. When the city wasn’t crawling with peacocky fellows like this one—a beatnik probably, “messed up” on Mary Jane, or who knows, maybe one of the fruits who’d started settling in the Castro. I swear, Mossford thought, it’s not safe to let your kids walk the streets these days. Why, if that were Pete—
Mossford stepped on the brakes. Peered through the window. On the other side of the glass, his fair hair dappled in a ray of sunlight that shone on him like a spotlight, eleven-year-old Pete Jr. pantomimed rolling down the window.
“Hey, Dad,” Chandler said as a blissful smile spread across Mossford’s face. “Wanna go camping?”
It was too tricky to keep the image of Pete Jr. firmly fixed in his father’s mind and at the same time convince Mossford that the western route out of Oakland was actually the road leading to the hills north of the bay, so Chandler let his chauffeur pilot the car as he wanted. Mossford spewed a stream of regrets to his son, apologies, pledges to do things differently. It wasn’t right, Chandler thought. In the morning Mossford would wake up with the night’s events pulsing in his brain more vividly than any memory, any dream he’d ever had, and how great would his sorrow be then? Life was hard enough already. One man shouldn’t be able to do this to another. But the longing for Naz was too great, and he pressed on.
When they were safely in the deserted hills, the fantasy of Pete Jr. told his dad that he thought this place looked swell. Mossford parked the car, then went to the trunk to unpack the tent. Chandler couldn’t bear to watch him go through the motions, a beaming smile on his face as he pounded imaginary tent pegs into the ground with an invisible hammer, so Pete Jr. said, “Look, Dad, I did it myself,” and there before Mossford’s eyes was a perfectly pitched pup tent. Mossford didn’t question it, just as he didn’t wonder how it had gone from a golden morning to a blustery night in the hour it had taken them to drive out of the city. Instead, father and son crawled into their respective sleeping bags for the night.
“Can we go fishing tomorrow, Dad?” was the last thing Pete Jr. said to his father.
Mossford pulled the imaginary zipper of his sleeping bag all the way up. “Whatever you want, son.”
Chandler waited till Mossford was asleep before he lifted the man’s wallet from his pants and got back in the car. He felt like a complete heel. He wanted to punish the people who had done this. Wanted to make them feel what Peter Mossford would feel when he woke up. But as soon as he had that thought, an image of Eddie Logan flashed in his mind—his face, contorted in terror, his own hand driving a knife into his heart to spare himself the horror that Chandler had put in his mind—and he knew that he’d already done much worse than what he’d done to Mossford.
It was a mean world, Chandler thought, and yawned widely. With or without mental powers, it was a mean, cold world. The mere thought of it exhausted him, and he struggled to keep his eyes open as he piloted Mossford’s car on the rainbow ribbon of deserted highway. All he wanted was to find Naz and curl up with her and sleep forever, or at least until this nightmare was over.
Washington, DC
November 9, 1963
The blade of Rip’s knife glinted in the dim light. He appeared in no hurry to press the attack, and Melchior took a step back, slipping off his jacket. Rip was bending his right wrist tenderly, and Melchior suspected he’d fractured a bone or strained the tendons. Hard to stab someone when you can’t close your hand all the way. After a moment Rip moved the knife to his left hand. That’ll make things easier, Melchior thought.
“Tell me, Rip,” he said as he wrapped his jacket around his right hand, “were you ever actually trying to kill Castro, or were you just there to keep an eye on me?”
“I’d tell you that you’ve got an inflated sense of your own importance,” Rip countered, “but you’re almost right. Killing Castro was the primary mission, but getting rid of you was the fallback.”
“It wasn’t the Cubans, was it? You ratted me out. I spent eight months in Boniato because of you.”
Rip’s smile caught the streetlights and glowed wetly.
“I’d’ve preferred killing you myself, but I’d been made and had to get out of the country.”
The two men circled each other warily. Melchior suspected Rip wouldn’t actually kill him unless he was forced to, since a dead man can’t provide any information. He’d have to pull his blows, at least at first. That might be Melchior’s only chance.
“So tell me. Does the Company know Orpheus is alive?”
“They do now. Jesus Christ, Melchior. You’re Frank Wisdom’s personal pickaninny. We always knew you was crazy, but a traitor? What gives?”
“It was the Company that betrayed the Wiz. Pushing him out of Plans, frying his brains to shit. My loyalty was to him. It still is. I’m disappointed in you,” he threw in. “I’d’ve thought an old-timer like you would’ve known to bring a radio. Now I don’t have any choice but to kill you.”
Rip blinked. Melchior didn’t wait for a second chance. He lunged. Rip went for him with the knife, and Melchior put his padded right hand directly in its path. A searing pain sliced across his knuckles but he ignored it, twisting the rapidly dampening jacket around Rip’s wrist. The blood-soaked fabric tangled around Rip’s weapon, tying him to Melchior, who kicked his right foot into the side of Rip’s left knee. It buckled and Rip went down with a grunt. The tangled jacket pulled Melchior down on top of Rip, and he felt the knife drive deeper into his hand. At the same time there was a sharp pain in his right arm: in his panic, Rip was actually biting him. Melchior yanked his arm free. His elbow came down hard on Rip’s nose, and the man’s face vanished in a burst of dark blood. He brought it down a second time on Rip’s Adam’s apple, crushing it. The third blow, snapping the fallen man’s sternum, was purely punitive—he couldn’t believe the fucker had actually bit him.