I didn’t wait to see if Eligor would respond, I just threw the phone as far as I could, then listened until I heard it hit and shatter somewhere in the shadows. I knew that what I’d said was true: I was going to find Caz. I was going to find her even if I had to go to Hell and yank her out of Eligor’s arms to do it. I was going to free her so that someday she could stand in front of me and at least tell me honestly how much of what we’d had was real. I wasn’t going to rest until I knew the answer.
Clarence was sitting up when I got back to the pool, dabbing at his mouth with his sleeve. He’d obviously thrown up, but otherwise he didn’t look too bad. “What happened?”
“To Sam? He got away when you went down, I’m afraid.”
“No, what happened to me? What hit me?”
“The ghallu must have had a reflex twitch. Got you with its tail. Knocked you silly.”
Clarence squinted at the monster’s corpse, which was already beginning to turn into sludge, little rivers of gray and black trickling away into the cracks between the tiles. “That thing doesn’t have a tail.”
“Its leg, then. Doesn’t matter. Come on, let’s see if your ride is still waiting. I’m too tired to walk all the way back home.”
He asked for his dart gun, but I didn’t give it to him. He made a face at me like an angry third-grader. “You’d better start trusting me, Bobby. We’re on the same side.”
“Trust you?” I laughed. “Kid, you tried to arrest my best friend! And you hacked my phone.”
“It was nothing personal,” he protested. “I was doing my job.” He gave me a significant look. “I don’t have to tell them anything except what I learned about Sam and the Third Way. Everything else is your own business. Including your pal, the Countess.”
It was friendly blackmail, but it was still blackmail. “Where did you come from, anyway, kid?” I asked him. “Where did they find a piece of work like you?”
“Took me right out of Records because they knew you and Sam’d be too suspicious of anyone with a background more like yours.”
“A competent background, you mean? Yeah, well, they definitely fooled me, I’ll admit it. But I’ll decide for myself whether we’re on the same side. You’re still on probation with me.”
Clarence was outraged. “Probation? You’re the one who should have to prove yourself to me! You let Sam get away.”
I tucked his needle gun into my pocket. “Yeah, kid, but you’re the one who got your skinny ass kicked by something I’d already killed.”
thirty-nine
One more nasty surprise awaited me. As Clarence and I made our way (in my case, my staggering, exhausted, stinking way) off the footbridge on the mainland side a car waited for us in the Garcia Park lot. But it wasn’t a Lincoln Continental or any other kind of old lady car, it was the ugliest, pimped-out red gangsta mobile imaginable.
I’d seen it before.
Garcia Windhover was wearing what I imagine was his idea of a stealth-mission suit-all black, including a do rag that made him look like L’il Wayne’s severely anemic nephew. The stealth aspect was undercut a bit by the immense words “FUCK ALLA Y’ALL!” written across the front of his baggy XXXL t-shirt in screaming white letters.
“Mr. D!” He spread his arms exactly like he was welcoming me back from a tour of combat duty. Although in some ways it was true-in fact I felt like I’d been dropped out of an airplane without a parachute-G-Man was not exactly the person I would have hoped to find waiting for me when I got back on home soil. I ducked his enthusiastic bro-hug like a weary matador.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I turned to Clarence, who at least had the good grace to look sheepish. “Why is he here? How do you two even know each other?”
“I told you, I knew where you were, where you went,” Clarence said. “Because I didn’t know what you were doing-I didn’t know whether you were in cahoots with Sam. And so…well, I was kind of checking up after you.”
“Then he told me how he was your partner,” said Garcia with all the relish of a teenager confirming an urban legend he had heard from someone who had heard it from the guy it happened to. “So here I am, dude!”
I glared at Clarence, who shrugged and couldn’t quite meet my eye.
“I needed a ride,” he admitted. “I could tell something big was going down when you guys left the hotel, then I heard what had happened to the hotel on the television news.”
“You called him for a ride?” I said quietly as Garcia opened all four car doors, even though there were only three of us. “Shit, Clarence, you’re the worst undercover agent ever.”
“It takes about half an hour to get a cab up to Brittan Heights, Bobby. I was in a hurry, and he told me that he’d worked for you before.”
“Totally,” said Garcia, brushing some loose popcorn kernels out of the back seat. “I can be your wheel man.”
“No fucking way,” I said. “We are not ‘partners.’ I am not partners with you, Windhover, or you, Special Agent Treacherous Bastard.” I glared at Clarence.
Garcia looked intrigued. “Can I have a code name too, Mr. D?”
“Yes. ‘Idiot.’ And you may not call me ‘Mr. D.,’ either.”
“Then what should I call you?”
“Five minutes ago I would have said, ‘an ambulance.’” I dragged my weary bones into the back seat, then stretched out, dripping all over Garcia’s leather upholstery. My head was pressed uncomfortably against the door, but I didn’t care. “Now I just want to take three or four showers and sleep until August. So let’s go.”
“We could be your ‘associates,’” Garcia said cheerfully. “That sounds more bad-ass anyway.”
I groaned and closed my eyes and let the dizzy darkness climb back over me. I dimly felt the thump of Garcia backing over a concrete parking stop, the hydraulics in his stupid car setting the whole thing wobbling like a waterbed, then I surrendered to oblivion.
I finally made it to The Compasses about eleven the next evening, limping and bruised and burned but finally clean and at least partially rested. I waved to Kool Filter who was puffing furiously and talking into his Bluetooth, then I trudged up the stairs.
The place looked pretty good considering that the end facing the street had been reduced to rubble only a short time earlier. The floor had been swept, the worst damage hauled away or covered with plastic tarps, and Chico had a makeshift bar going, a big slab of one-and-a-quarter-inch plywood on trestles with boxes of booze stacked behind it. He had also salvaged enough chairs and tables from the wreckage that, if you squinted, it didn’t look all that different from an ordinary weekday night. Monica was sitting with Sweetheart, but she trotted over when she saw me and gave me a hug. The mere fact of her being kind and female was enough to make me mist up, but I didn’t want to mist up, and I certainly didn’t want to confuse Monica with all my weird emotions, so after just a few seconds I broke free. She let go only reluctantly.
“When we heard about the Ralston we thought you were dead or worse!” she said. “I was so worried about you, Bobby. Where’s Sam? Is he okay?”
Obviously the real news had not got out yet-Clarence had actually kept his word. I wondered how hard my bosses were going to try to hush everything up. “He’s okay, yeah. But I think he may be taking a long leave of absence.”
While Monica and Sweetheart pondered this, I asked Chico for one of his pricier iced vodkas and some orange juice-in two separate glasses; discovering how out of shape I was had made me consider adopting a healthier lifestyle. Drinking the orange juice separately seemed like it might fit the bill.
For about an hour I chatted amiably (and in large part untruthfully) with the Whole Sick Choir in ones and twos, but Monica and the rest could see I mostly wanted to be on my own in a room full of people, and so they didn’t stay long at my table. We’ve all been there, all had something go so bad that it clung to your mind for weeks. That’s one of the best things about The Compasses-everybody gets it. Besides, I knew I’d have to go to Mecca the next morning and make my official report, and since I didn’t know exactly what I was going to say, I didn’t want to box myself in too much now-a lot of people were going to be looking over my version of what went down at the Ralston and afterward. And of course, my bosses must already have been wondering if I’d been contaminated by my friendship with Sam-which was, of course, quite true. I’d let him go, hadn’t I?