Seventeen
Shit," said Bennett shrilly, "a cop."
In the backseat next to Daphne, Marrity didn't look around. "Has he got his lights on?" They were driving north on Fair Oaks Avenue, over the bridge that spanned the 210 freeway.
The stolen car rocked as Bennett hit the brakes.
"No, but he's right behind us! How fast was I going just now? What if he pulls us over? I haven't called Moira yet! And I've got fifty thousand dollars in my pocket! My God, what have you people done to me? You fucking Marritys—"
"Lay off the brake and just drive straight," Marrity said sharply.
"This car is stolen! I've got a gun in my pocket! And it was fired only a few minutes ago! Oh Jesus—" His hands were visibly shaking on the steering wheel.
Beside Marrity, Daphne turned around and knelt on the seat to look out the back window.
A moment later Marrity heard a muffled boom, and with a sudden cold chill in his stomach he guessed what had happened. He twisted around to look, and sure enough there was a car receding behind them, its hood up and billows of steam whipping around it in white veils.
"Make the first—" Marrity began.
"The police car blew up!" interrupted Bennett.
"I know. Make the first right turn you can, and pull over. I'll drive." Marrity smelled burning plastic.
"Jesus, now the car's on fire!"
"It's just your ashtray," said Marrity, feeling ready to vomit. His own hands were shaking now. "It'll—"
"It's the stereo," said Daphne. "There isn't an ashtray."
"Get off this street and park, dammit!" said Marrity loudly.
"Dad, I'm sorry," said Daphne, "I thought I had to!"
"Maybe you did, Daph." They swayed on the seat as Bennett wrenched the car into a right turn. Marrity wasn't sure his anger and dismay were justified, and he tried to keep them out of his mind, where Daphne could sense them. "Are the cops all right?"
Daphne was crying now. "Y-yes, I just grabbed the radiator!"
Bennett had turned right on Villa, and now steered the car to an abrupt stop against the curb. Black smoke was pouring up from the dashboard and curling under the windshield.
"I think we just abandon this car," said Marrity, levering open the right-side door and grabbing his briefcase. "Come on, Daph."
"I've got to bring Rumbold!"
"Sure, bring Rumbold."
Bennett climbed out of the car, and Marrity took Daphne's free hand and began striding away up the sunlit Villa Street sidewalk.
"Did Daphne blow up the cop car?" Bennett demanded breathlessly, catching up with them.
"Bennett, that's crazy," snapped Marrity. "Don't go crazy now." He peered ahead, not wanting to look back at the car. "I see some stores. Is that fifty thousand dollars of yours in cash?"
"Of course not," said Bennett. "But you asked her if the cops were all right, and she said—"
"Then I'll give you a quarter to call Moira with. She still works at the dentist's office in Long Beach, right? I'll give you a couple of quarters. We can stop for a drink after you call and still have plenty of time to get a cab and meet her in Hollywood."
"Or an ice cream," said Daphne humbly, trotting along beside him.
"Or an ice cream," Marrity agreed, squeezing her hand. "There used to be an ice-cream place up here when I was a kid." He cleared his throat. Bennett," he added awkwardly, "I think you saved our lives back there. At Grammar's house."
"And probably got myself killed doing it," said Bennett. "I'm not joking." He slapped his pockets. "I left my sunglasses in the car."
"You can afford another pair. The guy I'm going to call is with the National Security Agency. He'll believe what we tell him, and I think he'll arrest your — Sturm und Drang, and the woman who tried to kill Daphne and me this morning." And I hope they'll rescue my father, he thought, who also saved my life today. Marrity looked at Bennett, for once not focusing on the scowl and the bristly mustache. "I'm— grateful to you for saving me, and for saving my daughter," he said.
"Fuck you and your daughter," said Bennett, hurrying along. "And the NSA can't arrest people, they'd have to get the FBI to do it."
"Do you really have fifty thousand dollars in your pocket?" asked Daphne.
"I think it's two dollars less than fifty thousand," said Bennett gruffly. "I — shouldn't have said 'Fuck you.'"
"That's okay. Anybody who saves my dad's life can say anything he wants."
"Anybody who saves your dad's life should get a checkup from the neck up." He squinted at Marrity. "What does the National Security Agency have to do with all this? And Daphne said she grabbed the radiator — after you asked her if the cops were—"
"Grammar's father was Albert Einstein," interrupted Marrity. He was sweating, and his mouth still felt too full of saliva. "Grammar had something she got from Einstein, some kind of machine, I gather. The NSA wants it, and I imagine this crowd who tried to kidnap us just now wants it too." How much should he tell Bennett about all this? The man deserved to know something about what he had got tangled up in. "Grammar probably used it on Sunday, and that got everybody's attention, got all these people on to… us, her descendants. They all think we have it, or know where it is."
"Bullshit her father was Einstein."
Marrity blinked at him. "Does that really strike you as the most… today, the most implausible thing you've…" He waved and let the sentence go unfinished.
"Did Daphne use this machine to blow up the police car?"
"No. I don't know." Marrity spat into a hedge, and for a moment thought he would have to crouch behind the hedge to be sick. "In a way, maybe," he added hoarsely, taking a deep breath and stepping forward into the breeze.
His briefcase was getting heavy, and he could sense the ache in Daphne's arm from carrying Rumbold in the shoe box. She was about to explain, and he decided not to stop her.
"I watched that movie that I stole from Grammar's shed," she said, looking down at the sidewalk as she skipped to keep up with her father. "Pee-wee's Big Adventure, except it was actually another movie, an old silent movie." She blinked up at Bennett, squinting against the sun. "The movie scared me so bad that I burned up the VCR and my bed. Rumbold was on my bed."
"Poltergeist," said Bennett.
Oh that's all we needed, thought Marrity.
"Poltergeist?" asked Daphne in dismay. "Like the ghosts that came out of the TV, in that movie?"
"No, Daph," Marrity said, trying to project reassurance, "real poltergeist stuff isn't like the stuff in that movie at all. Poltergeist is when a teenage girl sets things on fire, at a distance, when she's upset. Nothing to do with ghosts or TV sets."
"Well," said Bennett, "it's supposed to be children around puberty, both boys and girls, though admittedly most recorded cases involve girls; and it's not just starting fires, by any—"
"Bennett," said Marrity. "It's a girl this time. And it's fires, this time."
"I was only—"
"There's a phone booth," interrupted Marrity, nodding ahead. "And there's a drive-in burger stand that probably sells ice cream."
It wasn't the place he remembered from his childhood — he and Moira had ridden their bicycles to an A&W root-beer stand that used to be here, in the early '60s. But this was the place that time had left them, and it looked as if it would do.
"I'm only going to eat the ice cream," said Daphne, "not the cone."
Bennett, and then Marrity, had talked to Moira on the pay phone, and had managed to convince her to leave work at once and drive to the Mayfair Market on Franklin, in Hollywood. Marrity had then phoned for a taxi, and had been told that one would pick them up in half an hour. Now they were at a picnic table in the roofed patio behind the hamburger stand, not visible from the street.