A tiny knot of people had gathered at the opposite end of the stage from the set, the people who had bolted from the basement. They were having a heated discussion. Guys wearing headphones turned and shushed them. They subsided guiltily.
I didn't see Merryman, which made sense, or Brooks or Barry either. On the set, Mary Claire was standing at the podium talking and Angel was seated, petting her kitten and waiting for fate to whisper in her ear. There were the usual masses of flowers.
The auditorium was packed. Not a seat was empty. A camera had been set up in the middle of the audience area to catch every nuance of the ecstasy of the ardent. This was live, to almost half a million people, according to Skippy. If things worked out, they were going to get quite a show.
Eleanor and I leaned against a wall, more or less out of the light. Mary Claire rambled on, throwing an occasional look at Angel. The smell was growing more pronounced.
"What now?" Eleanor said. "We can't just stand here."
"For the moment we can. Everybody's busy."
On her chair, Angel let her head loll forward. Now even Mary Claire smelled it. Knowing the camera was on her daughter, she looked past the lights with a questioning expression. Angel was past smelling anything.
"You inhabit a burned-out building," she said, looking sightlessly forward. "You see out through scorched and rippled windows. You built the building, and you burned it. You built it day by day and room by room, and then you closed the doors to those rooms and built new ones. And behind you, the fire crept in and made everything black and twisted."
"Not a bad beginning," I said to Eleanor.
"I don't know what she's talking about," Eleanor said peevishly. "Where is everybody? Those creeps, I mean."
"Don't worry. They're going to come to us."
"Well, goody. And how are we going to make them do that?"
She put the handkerchief to her face and breathed. It was really beginning to stink. People in the audience were fanning their faces with their souvenir programs. Angel's and Mary Claire's faces, printed in four colors, flapped back and forth across the room.
"Just wait," I said.
A spasm struck Angel. She started to stand up. I held my breath. Then she slumped back into her chair and a broad smile crossed her face.
"Wo," Angel Ellspeth said, "don't we all be lookin' fine tonight?"
Chapter 30
All over the studio, people stood like statues. The lighting man with the Hussong's T-shirt dropped his clipboard.
"I a new spirit," Angel said. "Name of Darnell." Mary Claire stared at her daughter, her jaw loose.
"Aton been given eternity off," Angel said happily. "He been jerkin' you people around pretty good. Wo, what a lotta catgut. Burn down the buildin' indeed. We say to him, Aton, for Chrissakes, cheer up. Spirit don't listen. He that kind of spirit. Been stubborn for a billion years."
A fat man in a San Diego State sweatshirt was frantically slicing his throat with his forefinger. No one looked at him. They were transfixed by Angel.
"Come on," I said to Eleanor, moving quickly away from the wall. I took the man by the sleeve of his shirt and tugged hard. He looked up at me unseeingly. I pinched the skin of his forearm, and he focused.
"Knock it off," I said. "You're a hired hand. Don't you know when your footage is going to make the NBC News?" He sawed reflexively at his throat a couple of times and then something clicked behind his eyes. He looked at me with fresh attention.
"You know what they'll pay for this?" I asked.
The man licked his lips.
"Keep the tape rolling," I said. I winked at him. He closed both eyes back at me. He was one of those guys who can't wink. "Practice," I said, opening my right eye horribly wide with my fingers and closing my left. "Works wonders in a singles bar." I tapped his shoulder for emphasis. "Keep the tape rolling," I told him again.
By now the reek in the studio had climbed to the treble clef. Some members of the audience had gotten up, frantically fanning their faces, and were heading for the exit. They were probably the same faint hearts who had left during the music. Even a few of the stagehands were deserting in the direction of the loading dock. One of the cameras was unmanned, peering dolefully at the floor. The people who remained in the audience seats, though, were watching Angel as if their lives, or the life of someone interesting, were flashing before their eyes.
So, I was sure, were the people at home. They couldn't smell it.
"Here they come," Eleanor said.
There was a sudden explosion of activity at one of the exits. A sort of roiling force propelled itself in ripples through the people streaming out through the door, and Brooks came in, shoving his way frantically through them and dragging Barry in his wake. Brooks had had a rebirth of energy; he threw people aside like a mother trying to get to a drowning child. Which, in a sense, he was. He pulled Barry behind him like a carry-on bag on wheels.
"We follow them," I said.
"I knew you were going to say that," Eleanor said.
Angel had begun to clap her hands. Dexter was improvising. "Every clap," Angel said, "gone open your eyes a little more." Clap. "No more bullshit about the past." There goes NBC News, I thought. Clap. "No more sendin' in money to these folks. They just spendin' it on dope and loose women." Clap. "No more watchin' TV. How come you not readin' somethin right now?" Clap.
Brooks and Barry had fought their way to the stage. The stairs were clogged with departing technicians, but Brooks vaulted to the stage like a fourteen-year-old gymnast and yanked Barry up after him. The two of them sprinted past a bewildered Mary Claire and right in front of the remaining functional camera, manned by a dutiful gent who was holding his nose. I looked up at a monitor and saw them speed across it.
"Great," I said, "they're on tape. Let's go."
Brooks was hammering on the door of the dressing room, which was locked. "Allow me," I said, tapping him on the shoulder. He nodded blindly, without even looking at me. I lifted a foot and kicked the door in. It jolted me all the way to my teeth.
Dexter looked up from his headset and gestured at all of us with the automatic in his right hand.
"Damn," he said. "I thought you'd never come. I runnin' out of bullshit." On the P.A. system, I heard Angel say in the same singsong voice, "I runnin' out of bullshit."
Barry took a quick step back. I put the tip of Fauntleroy's Swiss Army knife against his throat and said, "Please try to get away." He rolled his eyes at me and froze, as still as a Civil War photo.
Merryman was facedown on the floor, his hands tied behind his back with one of the handkerchiefs I'd given Dexter. With the door open, the stench was beginning to pour into the room. I pushed Barry forward, and Eleanor took Brooks's arm.
"I think you should go inside, Mr. Brooks," she said politely.
Brooks was in shock. "Thank you, my dear," he said in a courtly manner. "I believe I will." He looked older than J. Paul Getty.
All of us filed in. I closed the door against the smell. Dexter, the automatic trained squarely on Barry, said into the headset, "Th-th-that's all, folks," and took it off. Then he gave me the broadest smile I'd ever seen.
"That's all," Brooks repeated lifelessly.
"Any trouble getting in?" I asked Dexter.
"Trouble?" Dexter said. "I tell the man I come for the dead animal and he almost pick me up and carry me in." He beamed.