And there was Elaine, backing away, looking distressed but not scared, actually giving me a little “I’m sorry” shrug before fading away.
I’d been grabbed the same way as Nita, somebody clutching both my arms from behind. I thrust my elbows back, hard, got an “Ooooof!” out of it and the hands released me. I spun and lost half a second realizing this dope in the fedora was Hal Harper, the security guy who worked for the Hughes organization. He threw a punch that I ducked and I swung a fist into his balls and got a satisfying yelp out of him. Even more satisfying was how he went down on his knees and tried not to cry.
That was when somebody else to the left side of me knocked my ass out.
Nineteen
Thwack, scoop, rattle, whump.
The sound, rhythmic but not musical, was not at once identifiable. A crunch, a raspy scooping of sand or maybe gravel or just any hard material, and then a rattling thud.
Not close, or at least not nearby. Or was it just something I was dreaming?
Thwack, scoop, rattle, whump.
I opened my eyes and was staring into a child’s scorched face — no, not a child, a mannequin kid’s disembodied head, a boy with almost feminine features, smiling a little, not at all concerned about being badly burned or separated from his body. I was on my side, head aching from the blow that knocked me out, hands tied behind me, secured — bound somehow, as were my ankles, by rope. Looked like lengths of clothesline. Behind me it would be the same.
Thwack, scoop, rattle, whump.
I was in last night’s clothes, save for the blazer, missing in action somewhere, the empty .38 holster still on the belt of the gray slacks, which like my white turtleneck were smudged with dirt in random non-design. My shoes were gone, too, my socks on.
Thwack, scoop, rattle, whump.
I swung myself into a sitting position and found I was not alone. In my immediate field of vision was a family of mannequins — the rest of the boy was on its side over to the left, the apparent parents near toppled armchairs they’d been dumped from and flung halfway across a table, the man grinning and armless (his upper limbs scattered here and there in the featureless room), the woman in two pieces like the Black Dahlia, both husband and wife attired in burnt-black unidentifiable clothing. A few pieces of living room furniture were upended here and there. A window had no glass though the brick fireplace looked fine, and the walls were blank but for one askew framed portrait of Jesus — one of those idealized 1950s portraits of the son of God. At least the eyes didn’t follow you.
Thwack, scoop, rattle, whump.
What the fuck was that?
I should know but I didn’t. I craned my neck and realized I had company in addition to the J.C. Penney window dummies. Nita, pinned-up hair come undone and hanging, her honeycomb dress and white hose splotched with dirt, lay on her side, hands behind her, ankles bound like mine, unconscious but breathing. Beyond her was another figure, male, in a sport shirt and slacks, also on his side but facing away from us, his wrists secured by a length of clothesline, ankles, too. Shoes gone.
Thwack, scoop, rattle, whump.
Somehow I got my stockinged feet under me and stood and hopped like a fucking rabbit over to Nita. She was still very much out, but the man was moving, coming around. I hopped to the other side of him, and damn! It was Shep! Shep Shepherd, my CIA buddy. He had a contusion along one side of his face and looked generally roughed up.
Thwack, scoop, rattle, whump.
I leaned toward him as best I could. Speaking in a whisper came automatically: “What the fuck, Shep?”
He blinked a bunch of times, gathering the pieces of his consciousness together. He gave me an embarrassed gap-toothed smile.
“They... they grabbed me at my hotel.” He was whispering, too. “Parking lot. This bunch... they must work for the rogue Company faction, ones behind all this...”
“At least one of them was at the Ambassador. I think he may be the shooter. Hal Harper’s another. Is there a woman with them? Young woman, good-looking?”
“N-no. Not even an ugly one.”
“This one’s no dog. Topless dancer, stripper from L.A. — she’s the polka-dot dress girl.”
“Hell you say.”
“I was getting ready to take her in to the FBI and she seemed to be cooperating, but she must’ve got a phone call off to these pricks. How many?”
“Three that I saw.”
Thwack, scoop, rattle, whump.
“I’m gonna get down there with you. See if you can untie me. I hope you were a fucking Boy Scout.”
We got back to back, wrist to wrist. It was hot, not humid, but still hot enough that we hadn’t been at it long at all before we were sweat soaked. He worked on the knotted rope binding me. It probably didn’t take him more than three minutes, but it felt like forever.
Thwack, scoop, rattle, whump.
I sat up and untied my ankles. “I think I know what that sound is.”
“So do I. They’re digging holes.”
“Just for shits and giggles, right? Not graves or anything.”
“Yeah. Just for fun. Do you know where we are?”
I started untying Shep’s wrists. The knots were tight and tough. “Atomic City, maybe? The little fake town the government built and dropped an H-bomb on, just to see what would be left?”
“You’re close. This is Survival Town. Nothing much was left of Atomic City, so they built a second one, better.”
“Survival Town.”
Shep nodded. “Pride of Yucca Flats. We’re an hour or so outside Vegas. They made it complete with cars, power lines, even people... well, bogus people. Concrete-block structures. Reinforced brick buildings. Reinforced masonry homes, like this one.”
As I worked at his bonds, I was listening and not just to him. “They stopped digging.”
“Taking a break maybe.”
I heard footsteps in sandy earth, growing closer. I wasn’t quite done with Shep’s wrist ropes and just patted him on the leg, then went over where I’d been before and resumed my position. I made only one adjustment: I took the decapitated kid’s head along.
I heard a voice outside call out: “I’m getting my lighter! Think I left it in the kitchen! Be right back...”
The shell of the kitchen was adjacent, no door separating us, so when he stepped inside the house through the doorless doorway, his footsteps on the disrupted floorboards were like cries of pain.
“Here it is,” he muttered, to himself.
I could see him: the ex-cop, Harper. He was in a short-sleeve yellow shirt, brown slacks and that out-of-date fedora. He got a pack of smokes from his breast pocket — Chesterfields. A .38 was stuffed in his waistband, mine I thought. Lighting up with his recovered Zippo, he looked toward where we were and, apparently, decided to check on us.
He stepped into the living room and I flung the kid’s head at him. It clocked him good, right in the forehead, but wasn’t enough to put him on his back though it startled the hell out of him and he was off-balance, in the doorway, when I threw myself at him. I got him by the knees and took him down with a whump and then climbed up his prone body like a ladder and collected the .38 along the way.
His eyes were huge when my face was in his and his mouth came open as I shoved the barrel of the snub-nose Police Special into the flesh where his jaw met his throat and I could see the flame in his open mouth as the bullet traveled up through his brain and out his skull.
That had worked out just fine. The shot wasn’t loud at all — between his fat neck and the journey through his head and out, it barely rivaled a cap gun.