As soon as Pearson saw Hagbard he motioned his men to stop playing. A murmur arose from the audience. "Well, all right, Hagbard," said Robert Pearson, "I was wondering if you were ever going to show up." He walked over to the side of the stage where Hagbard and his group were standing.
"Good evening, Waterhouse," said Pearson. "How's my gal, Stella?"
"Where the fuck do you get off calling her your girl?" said Waterhouse, his tone containing nothing but menace.
"The acid only opens your eyes, George. It doesn't work miracles."
And it shall come to pass, that whosoever call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
"Wonder what the hell is in that suitcase," Dillinger murmured.
"I'll open it," Saul said. "We'll all have to take the antidote anyway, after this. I have a supply out in the car." And he leaned forward, parted Carmel's stiff blue hands, and tugged the suitcase free. Barney, Dillinger, and Markoff Chancy crowded close to look as he snapped the lock and lifted the top.
"I'll be damned and double damned," Barney Muldoon said in a small, hollow voice.
"Hagbard has been putting us on all along," Simon says dreamily. (It doesn't matter in the First Bardo.) "Those Nazis have been dead for thirty years, period. He just brought us here to put us on a Trip. Nothing is coming out of the lake. I'm hallucinating everything."
"Something is happening," Mary Lou insisted vehemently. "It's got nothing to do with the lake- that's a red herring to distract us from the real battle between your Hagbard and those crazy musicians up there. If I wasn't tripping my head would work better, damn it. It's got something to do with sound waves. The sound waves are turning solid in the air. Whatever it is, the rest of us aren't supposed to understand it. This lake thing is just to give us something we can understand, or almost understand." Her black face was intense with intelligence battling against the ocean of undigestible information pouring in through all of her senses.
"Dad!" Simon cried, weeping happily. "Tell me the Word. You must know now. What is the Word?"
"Kether," said Tim Moon blissfully.
"Kether? That's all? Just Cabalism?" Simon shook his head. "It can't be that simple."
"Kether," Tim Moon repeats firmly. "Right here in the middle of Malkuth. As above, so below."
I see the throne of the world. One single chair twenty-three feet off the ground, studded with seventeen rubies, and brooding over it the serpent swallowing its tail, the Rosy Cross, and the Eye.
"Who was that nice man?" Mary Lou asked.
"My father," Simon said, really weeping now. "And I may never see him again. Mourning never ends."
And then I understood why Hagbard had given us the acid- why the Weather Underground and Morituri used it constantly- because I started to die, I literally felt myself dwindling to a point and approaching absolute zero. I was so shit-scared I grabbed Simon's hand and said "help" in a weak voice, and if he had said "Admit you're a cop first, then I'll help," I sure as hell would have told him everything, blurted it all out, but he just smiled, squeezed my hand gently, and murmured, "Its alive!"- and it was, the point was giving off light and energy, my light and my energy but God's also, and it wasn't frightening because it was alive and growing. The word "omnidirectional halo" came to me from somewhere (was it Hagbard talking to Dillinger?), and I looked, holy Key-rizt, Dillinger split in two as I watched. That was the answer to one question: There were two Dillingers, twins, in addition to the fake Dillinger who got shot at the Biograph, 0 = 2, I thought, feeling some abstract eternal answer there, along with the answer to some of the questions that had bugged so many writers about Dillinger's criminal career (like why some witnesses claimed he was in Miami on that day in 1934 when other witnesses claimed he was robbing a bank and killing a bank guard in East Chicago, and why Hagbard had said something about him being in Las Vegas when I could see him right here in Ingolstadt), but it was all moving, moving, a single point, but everything coming out of it was moving, a star with swords and wands projecting outward as rays, a crown that was also a cup and a whirling disc, a pure white brilliance that said "I am Ptah, come to take you from Memphis to heaven," but I only remembered the cops who beat Daddy up in Memphis and made him swear when he got back that he'd never go south again (and how did that tie in with why I became a cop?), and Ptah became Zeus, lacchus, Wotan, and it didn't matter, all were distant and indifferent and cold, not gods of humanity but gods above humanity, gods of the void, brilliant as the diamond but cold as the diamond, the three whirling in the point until they became a turning swastika, then the face of the doctor who gave me the abortion that time I got knocked up by Hassan i Sabbah X, saying, "You have killed the Son of God in your womb, black woman," and I started to weep again, Simon holding my hand and repeating, "Its alive," but I felt that it was dying and I had somehow killed it. I was Otto Waterhouse in reverse: I wanted to castrate Simon, to castrate all white men, but I wouldn't; I would go on castrating black men- the Nightmare Life-in-Death am I.
"It's alive, baby," Simon repeated, "it's alive. And I love you, baby, even if you are a cop."
("The whole lake is alive," the vibe man with the Fillet of Soul was trying to explain to the rest of that group, "one big spiral rising and turning, like the DNA molecule, but with a hawk's head at the top…")
"Good evening, Waterhouse," said Pearson. "How's my gal, Stella?"
"Where the fuck do you get off calling her your girl?" said Waterhouse, his tone containing nothing but menace.
"Cool it brother," said Pearson reasonably.
"Don't hand me that brother shit. I asked you a question."
"You and your question come out of a weak, limp bag," said Pearson.
Hagbard said, "Robert only fucks white women, Otto. I'm sure he's never laid Stella Maris."
"Don't be too sure," said Pearson.
"Don't play with Otto, Robert," said Hagbard. "He specializes in killing black men. In fact, he's only just killed his first white man, and he's not at all sure he enjoyed it."
"I never knew what killing was before," said Waterhouse. "I was crazy all those years, and I enjoyed what I did because I didn't know what I was doing. After I killed Flanagan I understood what I'd been doing all along, and it was like I killed all the others all over again." His cheeks were wet, and he turned away.
Pearson stood looking at him for a moment, then said softly, "Wow. Come on, Hagbard. Let's get you on stage." They walked out to the microphone together. A few people in the audience had begun clapping rhythmically for more music. Most, though, had been waiting silently, happily, for whatever might happen next.
What happened was that Robert Pearson said to them, "Brothers and sisters, this is Freeman Hagbard Celine, my ace, and the heaviest dude on the planet Earth. Listen while he runs it down to you what's happening."
He stepped aside and deferentially ushered Hagbard to the microphone.
Into the silence Hagbard said, "My name, as Clark Kent just told you, is Hagbard Celine…"